What the developer wrote
Authored by Rusty Russell
Build: add function sections.
This allows further reduction in binary sizes.
Size of all user before:
text data bss dec hex filename
64277932 904968 317576 65500476 3e7753c (TOTALS)
After:
52443036 729560 271720 53444316 32f7edc (TOTALS)
Some are dramatic, such as lightning-cli not pulling in libbacktrace:
174454 2880 296 177630 2b5de cli/lightning-cli
56633 2608 232 59473 e851 cli/lightning-cli
But most things get a 25% trim:
3972339 363568 21760 4357667 427e23 lightningd/lightningd
3300337 247768 21664 3569769 367869 lightningd/lightningd
Changelog-Changed: Build: most binaries are now about 20% smaller.
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
What changed, and why it matters
This commit is a build-system optimization that makes the compiled program files smaller by telling the linker to discard unused code sections. It does not change any program behavior or fix any security issue.
No security action needed; this is a benign build optimization.
Security signals we found
No strong security signals were identified.
Evidence from the diff
The Makefile change adds -Wl,--gc-sections to LDLIBS when HAVE_FUNCTION_SECTIONS is set. This linker flag removes unused ELF sections during linking, reducing binary size. It is a size-optimization build change with no functional or security relevance visible in the diff or commit message.
Changed components
MakefileInspect captured patch +4 / −0
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 0b7b88f8..97983e6a 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -313,6 +313,10 @@ else
LDLIBS = -L$(CPATH) -lm $(SQLITE3_LDLIBS) $(COVFLAGS)
endif
+ifeq ($(HAVE_FUNCTION_SECTIONS),1)
+LDLIBS += -Wl,--gc-sections
+endif
+
# If we have the postgres client library we need to link against it as well
ifeq ($(HAVE_POSTGRES),1)
LDLIBS += $(POSTGRES_LDLIBS)
Why this scored 15/100
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