--localize-hidden seems to be more what I was thinking of. So this works: ld --relocatable --whole-archive crappy-regular-static-archive.a -o merged.o

--localize-hidden seems to be more what I was thinking of. So this works: ld --relocatable --whole-archive crappy-regular-static-archive.a -o merged.o objcopy --localize-hidden merged.o merged.o This should (?) then solve most issues in the article, except that including the same library twice still results in an error.