How to remove unused C/C++ symbols with GCC and ld?

Question

I need to optimize the size of my executable severely (ARM development) and I noticed that in my current build scheme (gcc + ld) unuse

Answer 1

I don't know if this will help with your current predicament as this is a recent feature, but you can specify the visibility of symbols in a global manner. Passing -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden at compilation can help the linker to later get rid of unneeded symbols. If you're producing an executable (as opposed to a shared library) there's nothing more to do.

More information (and a fine-grained approach for e.g. libraries) is available on the GCC wiki.