Re: extra symtab entries in thumb mode

[Mikko Rapeli <mikko dot rapeli at teleca dot com>]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 08:48:42AM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:59:43AM +0300, Mikko Rapeli wrote:
> > A view at the symtab symbol table shows that in thumb mode it contains
> > a few thousand more functions beginning with leading underscores and 
> > around seven thousand of NOTYPE's named $a, $d and $t. Starting from
> > thumb mode entry 12233 the names are equal to ARM mode entries starting
> > from 122.
> > 
> > Any ideas for fixing this are appreciated.
> 
> These are features.  If you're concerned about on-disk file size of
> the libraries, you can strip them; they do not take up memory space.
> The $a/$d/$t symbols mark locations of ARM mode, data, and Thumb mode;
> the other symbols are probably markers on the PLT or on ARM mode
> export stubs.

Indeed, stripping the binaries is the way to go when space is scarce.

But NetBSD's binutils 2.16.1 (and some patches) don't include so many
symbols, just 3261 entries in thumb mode. The extra underscore entries
are gone as are $a, $d and $t's. That's why I didn't see this effect on 
binary size before binutils upgrade to 2.18.50.

Is there some way to get the old functionality back?

Did some tool change, say, command lines options between 2.16.1 and 2.18.50, 
which might cause this?

-Mikko