From: kagel AT quasar DOT bloomberg DOT com
Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 09:06:54 -0400
Message-Id: <9605161306.AA04556@quasar.bloomberg.com >
To: dj AT delorie DOT com
Cc: cjohns AT desertoak DOT awa DOT com DOT au, A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk,
        DJGPP AT delorie DOT com
In-Reply-To: <199605160312.XAA07094@delorie.com> (dj@delorie.com)
Subject: Re: Unused functions
Reply-To: kagel AT dg1 DOT bloomberg DOT com

   Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 23:12:42 -0400
   From: dj AT delorie DOT com (DJ Delorie)

   > Does 'ld' support function level linking ?

   No.  IBM's AIX linker does, but there's a lot of overhead involved.

   > Would it be a good idea to support function level linking ?

   Not for V2's libc, since we already manually split up the source files
   to nearly eliminate unused functions from being linked in in the first
   place.  It's easier to write the code that way than to teach the
   linker to fix it for you.  Most code falls into one of two categories:

   1. Part of a library.  Manually split the code into many sources once,
      and every user benefits.

   2. Part of an application.  Hey, you're going to use them all anyway
      or you wouldn't have written them, right?

BTW one way to eliminate uncalled functions is to keep you granularity as fine
as possible, ie put only one function, or a few functions required together,
per source file and put everything into a library except main().  In this way 
the linker CAN filter unreferenced functions for you.  Just treat everything as
an application specific library.

-- 
Art S. Kagel, kagel AT quasar DOT bloomberg DOT com

A proverb is no proverb to you 'till life has illustrated it.  -- John Keats