The problem is, however, that if I remove those values, the Strawberry build process fails

Interesting ... you've come across a situation where those values *do* contribute something useful. What error messages do you get when you remove those values ?

More effort is needed by people that actually understand GCC to help investigate exactly why that is, I suspect

I don't think it would have much to do with gcc. But then if, in the first place, I was wrong about the potential usefulness of the code in question .....

Cheers,
Rob