C++ static global non-POD: theory and practice

Question

I was reading the Qt coding conventions docs and came upon the following paragraph:

Anything that has a constructor or needs to run code to be initialized

Answer 1

If the static object is defined in an object that does not get referenced, the linker can prune the object completely, including the static initializer code. It will do so regularly for libs (that's how the libc does not get completely linked in when using parts of it under gnu, e.g.).

Interestingly, I don't think this is specific to libraries. It can probably happen for objects even in the main build.