There's also the other 'old-school' method to compile each function into its own object file, I guess that's why MUSL has each function in its own source file:

There's also the other 'old-school' method to compile each function into its own object file, I guess that's why MUSL has each function in its own source file: https://github.com/kraj/musl/tree/kraj/master/src/stdio https://github.com/kraj/musl/tree/kraj/master/src/stdio ...but these days -flto is simply the better option to get rid of unused code and data - and enable more optimizations on top. LTO is also exactly why static linking is strictly better than dynamic linking, unless dynamic linking is absolutely required (for instance at the operating system boundary).