Re: Does GCC link only used functions?

[Steve Graegert <graegerts@gmail.com>]

On 1/29/06, Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello list. I am relative newbie to GCC.
>
> I have a C program which #includes a header file which in turn #includes many
> other header files. These header files are part of an open source library set
> I got from the net.
>
> Now I do not use all the functions in the various libraries, but the makefile
> which came with the library of course has compile instructions for all the
> libraries. I have modified the makefile to compile my program using those
> libraries, but I did not remove the references to the libraries I knew I did
> not use, for I feared that some error may be caused.
>
> But later I experimented removing some of the superfluous ones from the
> makefile and again "make"-d, and I got the same size executable as before.
>
> So does this mean that GCC links only those functions from a library which I
> call directly or indirectly through another called function in the course of
> my program?

Yes,  everything not needed for program execution is simply dropped in
the stage of linking.

	\Steve

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Steve Graegert <graegerts@gmail.com>
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