A statically linked hello world in C using the MS toolchain gives me a 77Kb bina...

sebcat · on Sept 30, 2016

5344 byte statically linked hello world in C:

    $ musl-gcc -static -Os -s -o hello hello.c
    $ ls -la hello
    -rwxrwxr-x. 1 sebastian sebastian 5344 Sep 30 06:22 hello
    $ ldd hello
	    not a dynamic executable
    $ ./hello 
    Hello, World

384 Byte hello world using NASM and ld on linux/amd64:

    BITS 64
    global _start
    
    %define SYS_write		1
    %define SYS_exit		60
    %define STDOUT_FILENO	1
    
    section .text
    _start:
    	call	after
    strHello:	db 'Hello, World!',10
    lenHello	equ $-strHello
    after:
    	pop		rsi
    	mov		rdx, lenHello
    	mov		rax, SYS_write
    	mov		rdi, STDOUT_FILENO
    	syscall
    
    	mov		rax, SYS_exit
    	xor		rdi, rdi
    	syscall

Most of the size overhead in the latter example comes from the ELF header, so by paying a bit more attention to the linker scripts, or just inlining a small ELF header with db in the asm file, it would be even smaller.

Just for size comparison. I am sure that it's quite possible to generate small Rust binaries as well.

kibwen · on Sept 30, 2016

  > I am sure that it's quite possible to generate small Rust 
  > binaries as well.

Indeed, here's a 151-byte hello world[0] in Rust: http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2015/01/151-byte-...

steveklabnik · on Sept 30, 2016

It's not clear (though it seems like no?) that the parent used options like LTO that would reduce the binary size.

brainspider · on Sept 30, 2016

I just literally installed the compiler toolset and did the first demo in the tutorial. I have never seen anything so large before, but I'm not a coder and not a windows coder.

The only windows code I have compiled has been FreePascal and that wasn't this crazy.

Similar to what sebcat showed above, I've done a bit of assembly on systems 8bit and up including nasm on linux, so not used to binaries with this sort of baggage. Wasn't trying to paint rust in a negative light, just came as a surprise when I ran that first compile.

steveklabnik · on Sept 30, 2016

It's all good! I'm not assuming any malice. First impressions are also very important.