RFC [PATCH] Use .strtab section for section name strings

[Alan Modra]

On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 05:00:35PM -0700, H.J. Lu wrote:
> Here is a patch to use .strtab section for section name strings if
> there are symbols, otherwise use .shstrtab section.

I think this is a bad idea.

> I tried it on libstdc++.  For src/c++11/limits.o
> 
> Old: 93064 bytes
> New: 76040 bytes
> 
> It reduces file size by 18%.

A carefully selected object file. ;)  Long c++ mangled names,
-ffunction-sections, and a file with only a little over 1k text+data.
The great majority of object files won't see as much benefit.  I
reckon shared libraries and executables will only show very small
decreases, at the cost of violating the ELF gABI.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM