static executable bloat

[scottb]

I have to agree with Thorsten.  The size of executables matters.
I have to squeeze a bootable image for thin clients into 4 MB.  It was 
far easier with the older a.out tools I used to use with libc4.  I
don't want to go back, but I do wish there was a finer granularity for 
the linker to strip code.  For instance:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  printf ("Hello World\n");
}

compiles to 985,018 bytes.  This is almost all libc overhead.
Most of which is never going to be needed.

Scott