Re: linker memory footprint

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   From: jtc@redback.com (J.T. Conklin)
   Date: 04 Oct 1999 18:19:23 -0700

   Before sending the IT group out to buy SIMMs, I'm wondering if there
   are any changes we can make to either the way our image is linked or a
   linker memory reduction project I can sell management that I should be
   working on.

Are you using the --no-keep-memory option?

   Short a project that keeps debug information in the object files and
   modifies GDB to find it there, is there anything that can be done to
   reduce ld's memory usage?

It would be possible to reduce ELF memory usage somewhat, and speed it
up somewhat, by adding an option to skip checking the relocations in
the first pass.  This would only be correct when not doing dynamic
linking, so it could not be the default.  Also, the --no-keep-memory
option would cause about the same amount of memory savings anyhow.

I don't know of any way to reduce memory usage of the a.out linker.

It's quite possible that there is some way to reduce memory usage, but
I just haven't thought of it.  It's also quite possible that there are
bugs.  I don't want to discourage you from investigating.

Ian