FYI, jade was linking nsgmls with libstdc++2.8. I'm not sure what effect this had on everything (couldn't be good, no matter what...), so I'm trying again with libstdc++2.8 removed AND the optimiser reduced to -O. If all goes well, then I'll try again with -O2 and see. If not, then I'll remove the "strip" calls and see if it's a binutils problem STILL (quite possible IMO). C