On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:48 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
[off-list ref] wrote:

Moreover, __weak is positively harmful when you consider it adds bloat
and dead code - the overriden __weak function is left behind in the
resulting final image.

Huh, I didn't realize that.  Is that a linker bug, or is there some
reason the weak function has to be in the final image?  I tried a
trivial test on x86 with gcc-4.8.2/ld-2.24, and I think the weak
function text was omitted, but a string constant used only by the weak
function was included.

Bjorn