[GHC] #8405: experiment with using function-sections for linking (for smaller libs and executables)

[GHC]

#8405: experiment with using function-sections for linking (for smaller libs and
executables)
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        Reporter:  carter            |                   Owner:
            Type:  task              |                  Status:  new
        Priority:  normal            |               Milestone:  7.12.1
       Component:  Compiler          |                 Version:  7.6.3
      Resolution:                    |                Keywords:
Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple  |            Architecture:
                                     |  Unknown/Multiple
 Type of failure:  None/Unknown      |               Test Case:
      Blocked By:                    |                Blocking:
 Related Tickets:                    |  Differential Revisions:
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Comment (by olsner):

 Another benefit of this would be getting rid of the satanic splitter,
 build system support for split objects, and any other splitting-related
 hacks there might be laying around.

 FWIW, I've been hacking at a patch to do this in the native code generator
 (https://github.com/olsner/ghc/commits/function-sections).

 It passes almost all of the test suite now, and generated binaries for a
 simple "hello world" did get smaller. But that's compared to a build
 without split objs - for some reason function sections doesn't seem to
 help nearly as much as split-objs... So that's something I'll want to fix
 first. I have also only tested this on Linux so far.

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Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8405#comment:6>
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