From https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/ld/Options.html#Options
-Bsymbolic-functions When creating a shared library, bind references to global function symbols to the definition within the shared library, if any. This option is only meaningful on ELF platforms which support shared libraries. I have discovered this ld switch by seeing it offered in the alsa-lib configure script: --enable-symbolic-functions use -Bsymbolic-functions option if available (optmization for size and speed) My limited knowledge of how shared libraries work is that code refering to a 'so' function jump in a location containing a second jump to the address of the loaded symbol and this second jump instruction gets patched when the 'so' is loaded. So my understanding of the switch is that activating just go directly to the function without any indirection. Could it be interesting to make this switch standard in makepkg.conf? Has this ever been discussed in the past? The only potential problem that I can foresee with its usage is for programs 'hijacking' symbols by being preloaded first. The 2 programs that I know doing this are: trickle and glc but I am sure that there are many others.