[SOLVED] Query on -ffunction-section & -fdata-sections options of gcc

Issue

The below mentioned in the GCC Page for the function sections and data sections options:

-ffunction-sections
-fdata-sections

Place each function or data item into its own section in the output file if the target supports arbitrary sections. The name of the function or the name of the data item determines the section's name in the output file. Use these options on systems where the linker can perform optimizations to improve locality of reference in the instruction space. Most systems using the ELF object format and SPARC processors running Solaris 2 have linkers with such optimizations. AIX may have these optimizations in the future.

Only use these options when there are significant benefits from doing so. When you specify these options, the assembler and linker will create larger object and executable files and will also be slower. You will not be able to 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.

I was under the impression that these options will help in reducing the executable file size. Why does this page say that it will create larger executable files? Am I missing something?

Solution

When using those compiler options, you can add the linker option -Wl,--gc-sections that will remove all unused code.

Answered By - leppie