Some versions of strip(1) offer options in the form of command-line switches. Solaris 5.5, for example, has a version of strip(1) that supports an -x switch (among others), which causes debugging and line numbers to be stripped, but not the symbol table. If you wished to add this switch to the invocation of strip(1), you could do so like this:

define(`confSTRIPOPTS', `-x')

See your online manual for strip(1) to find switches that might be suitable to your needs.