[$] Shrinking the kernel with link-time optimization

This is the second article of a series discussing various methods ofreducing the size of the Linux kernel to make it suitable for smallenvironments.The first articleprovided a short rationale for this topic, and covered the link-timegarbage collection, also called the ld --gc-sections method. We've seenthat, though it is pretty straightforward, link-time garbage collection hasissues of its own when applied to the kernel, making achieving optimalresults more difficult than it is worth. In this article we'll have a look at what thecompiler itself can do using link-time optimization.