Symbol-level vs. file-level linking

I am investigating possible sources of executable-bloat
in a (large) set of (large) applications.


I know that some commercial linkers will do symbol-level, rather than
file-level linking. Is there such an option (or flag) with g++?


One observation that I have made is that we have many object files
containing not-necessarily interdependent functions, methods, and
static data. With file-level linking, the use of one such function
will pull in not only all of the other symbols, but all of their
dependencies as well.


If g++ does not provide such an option, is there some other tool for
parsing and breaking-up object files, if only to analyze the results
for sources of possible improvement?


                                        Thank you for your assistance,


                                            Joel


                                    P.s. Any related suggestions would be most welcome
--
Joel Kniaz JKniaz@BlackRock.COM
BlackRock
[The IBM AIX linker and the latest Microsoft C++ can do routine level
garbage collection, but I haven't seen it in GCC yet. -John]

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