8.4.10 Do Not Remove Unused Sections (--unused_section_elimination Option)

NOTE

This option applies when using EABI mode only. It is ignored when using COFF mode.

To minimize the footprint, the ELF linker does not include sections that are not needed to resolve any references in the final executable. Use --unused_section_elimination=off to disable this optimization. The linker default behavior is equivalent to --unused_section_elimination=on.