Miles Bader <miles@xxxxxxx> writes: > Ian Lance Taylor <iant@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> The -fPIC option inhibits code inlining, which is probably why you are >> seeing smaller object files. > > Hmm, that's an unexpected side-effect... maybe the gcc documentation > should mention it? There is a great deal one could say about -fPIC. It's hard to know what should be said in the gcc docs. To me it seems more appropriate in some document about what PIC really is. What happens here is that when using -fPIC symbol interposition is permitted for any globally visible symbol. That is, the -fPIC code is presumed to wind up in a shared library. An executable may override any function in a shared library. The code in the shared library which calls that function is then expected to call the definition in the executable instead. It follows that when using -fPIC the compiler may not inline any call to a globally visible function, because that would prevent symbol interposition. Ian
