[Haskell-cafe] Re: Non-technical Haskell question

[John Goerzen]

On 2004-12-06, Robert Dockins <robdockins at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> On 6 Dec 2004, at 17:29, John Goerzen wrote:
>> 
>> This is presumably just because we don't have 'smart' linking, so the 
>> whole library is bundled in. I imagine in principle smart linking would 
>> be possible...
>
> Indeed, and it would probably help with the xwHaskell bloat from a 
> diffent post.

Could you clarify what exactly "smart linking" is?

The assumption I have gleaned with talking to a few experts on IRC is
this:

Presently, ghc will only link in a .o component of a .a file if symbols
from that .o file are actually used in the final executable.  This is
the motiviation for the split-objs feature; to reduce the size of
executables that use quite large .o files.

In my experience, most .o files are not that large.  Does that agree
with your experience?

-- John