[fpc-pascal] Trying to use gprof profiler, but linking keeps failing

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2026, mailinglists--- via fpc-pascal wrote:

> Hi. I wanted to use gprof to profile a binary of mine that has 
> performance problems. I'm trying to recompiled the fpgui framework and 
> the program with -O- and -pg but the framework fails at the linking 
> stage.
>
> Linking target/fpgui-framework
> bootstrap_program.pas(126,1) Warning: "crtbegin.o" not found, this will 
> probably cause a linking failure
> bootstrap_program.pas(126,1) Warning: "crtend.o" not found, this will 
> probably cause a linking failure
> /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc_nonshared.a(atexit.oS): in 
> function `atexit':
> (.text+0x7): undefined reference to `__dso_handle'
> /usr/bin/ld: target/fpgui-framework: hidden symbol `__dso_handle' isn't 
> defined
> /usr/bin/ld: final link failed: bad value
> bootstrap_program.pas(126,1) Error: Error while linking
> bootstrap_program.pas(126,1) Fatal: There were 1 errors compiling 
> module, stopping
> Fatal: Compilation aborted
> Error: /data/devel/fpc-3.2.2/x86_64-linux/bin/ppcx64 returned an error 
> exitcode
>
>
> Any ideas? I then did a google search and Gemini came back with this:
>
> The -pg (gprof) flag doesn't work well with Free Pascal — it tries to 
> link against C runtime profiling infrastructure (crtbegin.o, 
> __dso_handle) that FPC's linker setup doesn't support.
>
> Is this true?

Yes, it is...

Michael.