MacOs 10.6, if I have a file "unwanted.c" which contains:
class secret_thing {
public:
secret_thing() {}
void revealing_method_name() {}
};
main()
{
secret_thing obj;
obj.revealing_method_name();
}
Now I do:
$ g++ unwanted.c -o unwanted
$ strip unwanted
$ nm unwanted | grep secret
0000000100000eb8 T __ZN12secret_thing21revealing_method_nameEv
0000000100000eae T __ZN12secret_thingC1Ev
If I split out the interface and implementation of the secret class, as most people do when writing C++ code, then there are no unwanted symbols in the stripped executable. Sadly, I am handed an existing code base of many thousand lines of code and this isn't one of my choices.
I have tried -fno-rtti, as a wild guess, and that didn't fix anything. I have prayed to the Google gods and found many references to strip clubs, but no helpful links. I have skimmed the man pages for strip, g++, and ld on the mac, and there were no obvious things to try, though the phrase "private externs" was intriguing, I couldn't figure out what to do about that.
[ update ] Sadly, there turns out to be a problem with my attempt to make a small example. Here is a more complicated example, which is closer to what the real problem is, which still has unwanted symbols if it is built optimized.
I apologize for the bad examples. It turns out to be hard to find the smallest actual problem. Many thanks for the answers, though, each answer pushes me close to a solution.
class base {
public:
virtual int revealing_method_name() = 0;
virtual ~base() {};
};
class secret_thing : public base {
public:
int revealing_method_name() { return 0; };
};
class other_thing : public base {
public:
int revealing_method_name() { return 1; };
};
int main(int argc, char**)
{
base *object = 0;
if( argc > 1 ) object = new secret_thing;
else object = new other_thing;
return object->revealing_method_name();
}