RFC: Should the linker support '--fast' and if so, what should it do ?

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Guys,

  OK, this one is probably going to be controversial...

  I was wondering whether it would be useful to have a linker command
  line option to request a fast link, even if the results are not as
  good as a normal link.  In particular it occurred to me the merging
  string sections (and other mergeable sections) is not actually
  required by the ELF standard.  So if we skip that step quite a lot of
  time can be saved.  In my tests for example I saw time savings of
  around 20% for big links.  Of course the resulting executables are
  unnecessarily large and probably a bit slower than their merged
  equivalents, but for test builds during a development process this
  might not be an issue.

  So - am I going mad here or is this something worth looking into ?
  
Cheers
  Nick