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H8 support for --gc-sections ?

Grant Edwards grante@visi.com
Tue Dec 30 16:47:00 GMT 2003 
I've grown fond of using --gc-sections to simplify library
construction by allowing unused functions to be discarded [the
other option being putting every function in it's own source
file]. But, I find that feature isn't supported on my current
target [the Renesas (nee Hitachi) H8 family].

I know the docs say the option is simply ignored if it's not
supported, but a warning from the linker sure would have saved
me a lot of hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.
At least a note in the H8 section of the info file that the
feature isn't supported would be nice.

Better yet would be to add support for garbage collection for
the H8.  Is there some fundamental technical reason why it's
not supported, or is it a matter than nobody has cared enough
to just do it?  If the former, I'll shut up and go away now.
If the latter, I might take a whack at it in my "spare" time.
Somewhere in the news file, it says that "It does require a bit
of backend support". That doesn't sound too onerous...

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com
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