This can lead to confusion. E.g. today I was looking at:
https://codereview.chromium.org/2831503002
Where the size diff shows 40k change, but symbols account for only 86 bytes:
Section Sizes (Total=-40,004 bytes):
.bss: 32 bytes (not included in totals)
.data: 0 bytes (-0.0%)
.data.rel.ro: 0 bytes (-0.0%)
.data.rel.ro.local: 16 bytes (-0.0%)
.rodata: 0 bytes (-0.0%)
.text: -40,020 bytes (100.0%)
15 symbols added (+), 86 changed (~), 15 removed (-), 316622 unchanged (not shown)
0 object files added, 0 removed
Showing 116 symbols with total size: -86 bytes
.text=-102 bytes .rodata=0 bytes other=16 bytes total=-86 bytes
Number of object files: 102
Comment 1 by bugdroid1@chromium.org
, May 3 2017