R, on some platforms, leaves debugging symbols in the shared libraries it creates when building packages. This can cause significantly bloated libraries (especially when templates are used). r-stripper interrogates R about what linkers it will use when creating shared libraries. If it finds that you are using linkers that accept a command line option to strip debuging symbols, it will add that configuration to your src/Makevars file. If you don't have a src/Makevars file, it will create one at build time.

In your package, create an inst/tools/r-stripper directory. Place stripper and stripper.R there. From your configure file, call inst/tools/r-stripper/stripper.

Currently r-stripper only supports GNU ld, GNU gold, and Solaris Link Editors for debug symbol stripping. Adding others is fairly trivial, but I simply don't have access to them. Pull requests are welcome.

Daniel C. Dillon

GPL (>= 2)