Graham Stoney wrote:
> > This is the way the kernel used to be, with the kernel objects
> > as *.a files instead of *.o files.
>
> I'm definitely with you on this one. Using ld -r in intermediate
> stages is defeating the linker's natural ability to exclude unused
> objects. My patch achieves a similar effect by allowing the linker to
> exclude unused functions, but it does so in a very torturous way. I'd
> prefer to have both .a's for wholesale dead object elimination _and_
> -ffunction-sections for elimination of any remaining dead functions.
OTOH .a's are slower than ld -r. They don't save any I/O: all the
enclosed object files have to be duplicated until the final link anyway.
ld -r removes duplicate symbols and debugging information, which makes
the .o files smaller than the corresponding .a files and faster to read.
Using .a _and_ -ffunction-sections at the same time would surely be the
worst possible combination.
-- Jamie
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 21:00:12 EST