[avr-libc-dev] PROGMEM section variables throw away by --gc-sections?

[Dean]

Hi guys,

I've been noticing some strange behaviour with my makefile arguments.

Firstly, LD.exe crashes when I use -mshort-calls with the --relax linker 
option, but *only* if I *don't* use -ffunction-sections and --gc-sections. With 
the latter two options enabled both -mshort-calls and --relax work just fine.

Secondly, -ffunction-sections and --gc-sections seems to throw away some of my 
PROGMEM variables. I rely on a few PROGMEM variables being embedded into the 
binary so I can later distinguish which version it was compiled from, similar 
to:

char PROGMEM buildtime[] = __TIME__;

--gc-sections seems to remove this, although I thought it was only designed to 
remove unused functions and not PROGMEM data. Is there a workaround to this?

Thanks for the help,
- Dean