Tiny Binaries

Tiny static x86-64 Linux binaries which do the following:

1. print "hi!\n" to standard output.
2. exit with an exit code of 0.

The binaries were generated using a variety of languages and build methods, then sorted by size.

The results from this test were used in the following posts on my site:

• Tiny Binaries
• Tiny Binaries: Assembly Optimization
• Tiny Binaries Redux

Results

Plot of all results (Note: log scale X axis):

Plot of tiny results (less than 1k, linear scale):

Raw size results are available in the out/ directory in CSV format.

Languages and Build Methods

Generated using the following languages and build methods:

Name	Language	Description
go-1.16-default	Go 1.16	Default build options.
go-1.16-ldflags	Go 1.16	Built with -ldflags="-s -w".
go-1.16-default-upx	Go 1.16	Built with defaults and packed with upx.
go-1.16-ldflags-upx	Go 1.16	Built with -ldflags="-s -w" and packed with upx.
go-1.17-default	Go 1.17	Default build options.
go-1.17-ldflags	Go 1.17	Built with -ldflags="-s -w".
go-1.17-default-upx	Go 1.17	Built with defaults and packed with upx.
go-1.17-ldflags-upx	Go 1.17	Built with -ldflags="-s -w" and packed with upx.
go-1.18rc1-default	Go 1.18rc1	Default build options.
go-1.18rc1-ldflags	Go 1.18rc1	Built with -ldflags="-s -w".
go-1.18rc1-default-upx	Go 1.18rc1	Built with defaults and packed with upx.
go-1.18rc1-ldflags-upx	Go 1.18rc1	Built with -ldflags="-s -w" and packed with upx.
tinygo-0.22-default	TinyGo 0.22.0	Default build options.
tinyGo-0.22-nodebug	TinyGo 0.22.0	Built with -no-debug.
tinygo-0.22-default-upx	TinyGo 0.22.0	Built with defaults and packed with upx.
tinygo-0.22-ldflags-upx	TinyGo 0.22.0	Built with -no-debug and packed with upx.
rust-1.57-default	Rust 1.57	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static".
rust-1.57-default-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and packed with upx.
rust-1.57-abort	Rust 1.57	Built with --release and profile.release.panic = "abort".
rust-1.57-abort-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, profile.release.panic = "abort", and packed with upx.
rust-1.57-strip	Rust 1.57	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", then stripped with strip.
rust-1.57-strip-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", then stripped with strip and packed with upx.
rust-1.57-lto	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.lto = true.
rust-1.57-lto-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.lto = true, then packed with upx.
rust-1.57-oz	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.opt-level = "z".
rust-1.57-oz-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.opt-level = "z", then packed with upx.
rust-1.57-all	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.opt-level = "z", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.lto = true, then stripped with strip.
rust-1.57-all-upx	Rust 1.57	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.opt-level = "z", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.lto = true, then stripped with strip and packed with upx.
rust-1.59-default	Rust 1.59	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static".
rust-1.59-default-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and packed with upx.
rust-1.59-abort	Rust 1.59	Built with --release and profile.release.panic = "abort".
rust-1.59-abort-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, profile.release.panic = "abort", and packed with upx.
rust-1.59-strip	Rust 1.59	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", then stripped with strip.
rust-1.59-strip-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release and build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", then stripped with strip and packed with upx.
rust-1.59-lto	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.lto = true.
rust-1.59-lto-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.lto = true, then packed with upx.
rust-1.59-oz	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", and profile.release.opt-level = "z".
rust-1.59-oz-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.opt-level = "z", then packed with upx.
rust-1.59-all	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.opt-level = "z", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.lto = true, then stripped with strip.
rust-1.59-all-upx	Rust 1.59	Built with --release, build.rustflags = "-C target-feature=+crt-static", profile.release.opt-level = "z", profile.release.panic = "abort", and profile.release.lto = true, then stripped with strip and packed with upx.
c-glibc	C	Statically linked against glibc.
c-glibc-upx	C	Statically linked against glibc and packed with upx.
c-musl	C	Statically linked against musl.
c-asm	C (w/inline asm)	This is just the asm-opt assembly, ported to horrid gas syntax, and embedded in a largely pointless C wrapper.
asm-naive	Assembly	Unoptimized x86-64 assembly, built with nasm and linked with ld.
asm-opt	Assembly	Optimized x86-64 assembly, built with nasm.
asm-elf	Assembly	Optimized x86-64 assembly, built with nasm. Code is embedded in unverified portions of the ELF and program header.

Notes:

• Debian only packages Go 1.15.15 as of December 2021. Yeesh.
• Versions of gcc, upx, ld, strip, and nasm are from the current version of Debian.
• C compiled with GCC 10. I also tested with Clang, but the results did not appear to be substantially different.
• c-glibc-upx binary packed with upx --brute produced no output, so it uses upx --best instead.
• upx fails with NotCompressible when run against c-musl.
• upx refuses to compress any of the asm binaries.
• Rust optimization options were borrowed from Minimizing Rust Binary Size.
• Rust binaries packed with upx --brute produced no output, so they use upx --best instead.
• Rust nightly has cargo-features = ["strip"] but it is not available in stable, so I used strip -s instead.
• As of 2021-12-30, Rust nightly fails to build static binaries with warnings about getpwuid_r and getaddrinfo in statically linked binaries. See Dockerfile for full error.
• The opt-nostd build fails in Rust 1.57 and Rust nightly as of 2021-12-31. See Dockerfile for full error.
• ELF/PH overlap and unverified byte regions used by asm-elf were borrowed from Tiny ELF Files: Revisited in 2021. Thanks Nathan!

Build Instructions

There is a top-level Dockerfile which you can use to generate all of the binaries, the output CSV, and the output SVGs.

# build all stages
docker build -t pablotron/tiny-binaries .

You can save the generated CSV and SVGs to an output directory like so:

# create output directory and set permissions
mkdir ./out && chmod 777 ./out

# bind mount output directory, then copy generated reports to output directory
docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd)/out:/out pablotron/tiny-binaries

You can inspect the generated binaries in /data/bin like this:

# execute shell in container
docker run --rm -it pablotron/tiny-binaries sh

# switch to output binary directory
cd /data/bin

# install file
apk add file

# verify that binaries are statically linked
file *

# verify binary file sizes
wc -c *