[Skiboot] [PATCH 2/2] Dead code and data elimination

[Stewart Smith]

Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com> writes:

> Add an experimental option to do basic dead code and data elimintation
> with -ffunction-sections/-fdata-sections/--gc-sections.
>
> This saves about 80kB of text/data.
>
> Also remove the use of of -ffunction-sections by default. This predates
> git history, but I don't think there is a good reason to use it without
> --gc-sections. The GCC manual says:
>
>     Only use these options when there are significant benefits from
>     doing so. When you specify these options, the assembler and linker
>     create larger object and executable files and are also slower. You
>     cannot use gprof on all systems if you specify this option, and you
>     may have problems with debugging if you specify both this option
>     and -g.
>
> Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com>

Interesting... This seems to save 14kb of xz compressed space, which
also isn't too bad.

Looking through the output of --print-gc-sections, it's a little bit
interesting, and could be a good starting point for someone who wants to
go and find dead code to remove.

So, merged to master as of 2bec353d38a685a4352f48fbbf0d765359da3bdb

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.