Re: Why is memory footprint smaller when compiled static?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> Come now. Janus/Ada's linker has eliminated unused subprograms pretty
> much since it was created in the mid-80s. I doubt very much that we were
> 15 years ahead of the curve there... :-)
> 
> I realize that a lot of systems don't do this, and I've never understood
> why: it isn't particularly hard nor very expensive, and it can save a
> lot of space (it saves nearly 1 megabyte of code size in the Claw
> Builder, for example).

I agree -- linkers ought to do this.

But it's harder to do a good job with indirect calls (dispatching),
which you didn't have to worry about in Ada 83.

- Bob