[avr-gcc-list] AVR-GCC dead function elimination??

[David Snowdon]

G'Day,

I've been working on a library for doing a bunch of CAN communications 
on a number of platforms for a number of devices. I essentially want 
one library that I can include in a sensor in a network which makes it 
easy to write the small amount of software that customises that node.

I had thought that GCC would simply remove functions which aren't used. 
Since its a general-purpose library, not every node will use every 
function. This apparently isn't the case, but what are the limitations 
in providing such functionality? Its a massive problem since I only use 
a small proportion of the functions in each module in the library.

Eric Waddington suggested (on an AVRFREAKS forum) that I should compile 
each function into a different .o file, build a library using these 
files, and then the linker would selectively include the .o files. 
While it sounds like this would work, it seems like a bit of a hack!

Is this a feature that can be implemented? What are the limitations?

Cheers,

Dave.