Actually, -g should not change the output of the compiler in any other way than the presence of debug symbols. I can confirm that right here, where I'm building

Actually, -g should not change the output of the compiler in any other way than the presence of debug symbols. I can confirm that right here, where I'm building code for an ARM microcontroller, the resulting .bin files produced by objdump are identical (but the .elf are not). Granted, when the debug symbols end up in the final ELF binary which is executed by an OS, it can still affect execution in subtle ways such as load times.