-Wl,--as-needed

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2006-06-30 at 12:20 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> Inspired by ponderings on fedora-maintainers list, I had a look at what
> sort of effect -Wl,--as-needed would have on apt.
> 
> Without it, as things are right now:
... static linkage in effect?

> I'm wondering is the --as-needed something we should/could use by
> default?
I am very reluctant on this topic.

It has popped up every now and then, but had been dropped due to some
side-effects. Unfortunately I don't recall the details.

On thing I know for sure is --as-needed having occasionally failed due
to bugs somewhere.

>  For one, I've no idea what toolchain versions support it in the
> first place...
I recall, when it had been introduced ... some years ago [1], ... could
be binutils-2.13.x or so. I could check the binutils sources ...

... but IIRC all early versions had been more or less unusable.

>  Thoughts?
ATM, IMO, --as-needed is a promise and probably works in many cases,
but ... one counter example (which I am 99% sure can be found - I one
had a code example, I don't have anymore) suffices to prove it as "too
unreliable".

Ralf

[1] I am co-maintaining *-rtems-binutils/gcc.