On processors for D

[Walter Bright]

Nic Tiger wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> This capability of linkers (eliminating unreferenced functions) first 
>> appeared in the late 80's, and quickly became standard practice. If 
>> you've got a linker that doesn't support that, you're likely to have 
>> many other serious problems with it, as D (and C++) depend on other 
>> linker features introduced in the late 80's.
>>
>> D doesn't require anything of a linker that C++ doesn't already 
>> realistically require.
> Digital Mars linker is great in this field, but you definitely cannot 
> assume that all linkers sing late 80's are as smart as DMC.

I must say I'm surprised that 15+ year old linker technology that is 
easy to implement and once upon a time was much discussed (idiotically 
dubbed 'smart linking') seems to have fallen by the wayside.

At least the linkers D uses (optlink and newer versions of ld) support 
it. Optlink does it by default, and ld via a badly underdocumented 
obscure switch.