Re:An alternative to shared libraries (2008)
by ihalip on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @12:30PM
(#17401971)
MSVC linker also supports removing unused functions/data from the output binary: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bxwfs976.aspx. These can be applied irrespective of compiler optimizations, so you should still be getting good PGD debug symbols.
Haven't tried it personally, but it's worth a try.
I read complaints like this a lot. Have you ever tried using -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections and --gc-sections as in :https://elinux.org/images/2/2d/ELC2010-gc-sections_Denys_Vla...
I find static linking to take up far less disk space when done properly, but I keep seeing comments like this.