Re: [PATCH] Use ld's garbage collection feature

[David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>]

On Sun, 2006-06-04 at 21:31 -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> - Do not discard symbols referenced by modules (via KEEP directive
> from linker script). 

I think we should keep _all_ symbols which are exported, except perhaps
if some _extra_ config option hidden behing CONFIG_EMBEDDED is set. It
isn't acceptable to break the case of modules which you build only later
or out-of-tree.

I also want to play with '-fwhole-program --combine'. There's currently
a compiler bug with --combine getting on my tits, but if you #include
the whole of fs/jffs2/*.c or fs/ext3/*.c from one file and build that
with -fwhole-program, you also see a fair amount of benefit.

That would also render a certain amount of the gc-sections improvements
obsolete, although we can't use -fwhole-program in core code; only 'leaf
object' like drivers and filesystems so I think gc-sections is still
going to be a win.

-- 
dwmw2