Hi Dr. Rupp,
I was just looking into this very thing!
Do this in your Makefile...
--------8<--------
DEADCODESTRIP := -Wl,-static -fvtable-gc -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -Wl,--gc-sections -Wl,-s
foo : foo.c
g++ $(DEADCODESTRIP) $< -o $@
--------8<--------
Step by step...
-Wl,-static
Link against static libraries. Required for dead-code elimination.
-fvtable-gc
C++ virtual method table instrumented with garbage collection information for the linker.
-fdata-sections
Keeps data in separate data sections, so they can be discarded if unused.
-ffunction-sections
Keeps funcitons in separate data sections, so they can be discarded if unused.
-Wl,--gc-sections
Tell the linker to garbage collect and discard unused sections.
-s
Strip the debug information, so as to make the code as small as possible. (I presume that you'd want to do this in a dead-code removal build.)
The requirement to link against the static libraries was surprising to me. But there you go.
HTH,
--Eljay
