On: Making Rust binaries smaller by default

[anonymoushn]

I would hope that it could statically link libc and exclude the unreachable portions.

[zozbot234 → anonymoushn]

Rust can't do this very well because it doesn't build std as part of the project, that's still an unstable option. It's linking object code.

[Vogtinator → zozbot234]

C doesn't either, but statically linking still pulls only the object files which are actually needed into the executable.

[flohofwoe → Vogtinator]

I think that's the main reason why every stdlib function lives in its own source file in MUSL:

https://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/stdio

Not sure if this can easily be replicated in Rust though and LTO must be used instead for dead code removal.

[zozbot234 → Vogtinator]

A Rust crate is a single translation unit. It's the precise equivalent of a C source or object file.

[lifthrasiir → zozbot234]

Link-time optimization should have been beneficial for this case... unless you absolutely needed quite a bit of `std` to print backtraces.