Why are libgcc.a and libgcc_eh.a compiled with -fvisibility=hidden?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com> writes:

> So ... is there a valid reason for this, or is this just an accident
> of history?  AFICT, this behavior dates back to 2007 as of r120429
> (http://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/trunk/libgcc/static-object.mk?view=markup&pathrev=120429).

No, that's not right.  That change just moves the libgcc build out of
gcc over to libgcc as a top-level directory.  It didn't introduce the
visibility hiding.  I think that dates back to revision 50063.

2002-02-26  Jakub Jelinek  <jakub@redhat.com>

	* configure.in (libgcc_visibility): Substitute.
	* configure: Rebuilt.
	* mklibgcc.in: If libgcc_visibility = yes, make libgcc.a global
	defined symbols .hidden.


The patch was discussed here:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2002-02/msg01856.html .

However, I don't see any discussion of why this change was made.

CC'ed Jakub to see if he remembers.

Ian