Sure, I'm all for distributing the source. Doesn't mean it needs to be a single file. It should probably have a makefile which spits out an archive file, which you link to in your application.
I would like if when people did this they automatically had it compile the library with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections. This would make my life way easier, and if anyone is reading this, please add these flags. Combined with stripping the executable afterwards you can make things way smaller for embedded systems.
Please allow that mess of using ar to work in LTO mode, i.e., allow bypassing the ar or replacing it with the compiler in linking mode, or something. Basically don't use ar in a way that breaks LTO.
LTO is awesome, as some code does benefit from optimizing for a minute to get 5% more speed for the next week (and sometimes even more aggressive parameters for the optimizer, if you run the code for long enough to matter).
