SPRU513Z August 2001 – October 2023 SM320F28335-EP
The --compress_dwarf option aggressively reduces the size of DWARF information by eliminating duplicate information from input object files.
For COFF files, this is the default behavior, and can be disabled for COFF with the legacy --no_sym_merge option.
With EABI, the default is to use DWARF 4, which merges types efficiently. Such merging can be made slightly more efficient using the --compress_dwarf option. (See the ELF specification for information on COMDAT groups and type merging.)