How to reduce compiled file size ?

Question

Lets compare c and go: Hello_world.c :

#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
    printf("Hello world!");
}

Hello_world.go:

package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
    fmt.Printf("Hello world!")
}

Compile both:

$gcc Hello_world.c -o Hello_c 
$8g Hello_world.go -o Hello_go.8
$8l Hello_go.8 -o Hello_go

and ... what is it?

$ls -ls
... 5,4K 2010-10-05 11:09 Hello_c
... 991K 2010-10-05 11:17 Hello_go

About 1Mb Hello world. Are you kidding me? What I do wrong?

(strip Hello_go -> 893K only)

Answer 1

Is it a problem that the file is larger? I don't know Go but I would assume that it statically links some runtime lib which is not the case for the C program. But probably that is nothing to worry about as soon as your program gets larger.

As described here, statically linking the Go runtime is the default. That page also tells you how to set up for dynamic linking.

Answer 2

Go binaries are large because they are statically linked (except for library bindings using cgo). Try statically linking a C program and you'll see it grow to a comparable size.

If this is really a problem for you (which I have a hard time believing), you can compile with gccgo and dynamically link.