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From: bart <bc@freeuk.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C23 thoughts and opinions
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2024 11:20:11 +0100
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On 09/06/2024 10:40, Michael S wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 14:52:26 -0500
> BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 6/8/2024 1:28 PM, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>> On 07/06/2024 01:53, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 15:38:21 -0500, BGB-Alt wrote:
>>>>   
>>>>> *2: Seemingly the main way I am aware of to get small binaries is
>>>>> to use an older version of MSVC (such as 6.0 to 9.0), as the
>>>>> binary-bloat started to get much more obvious around Visual
>>>>> Studio 2010, but is less of an issue with VS2005 or VS2008.
>>>>
>>>> Newer version of proprietary compiler generates worse code than
>>>> older version?!?
>>> If the code is calling extern gunctions that do IO, we woul expect
>>> these to be massively more sophisticated on a modern ststem Witha
>>> little comouter, pribtf just wtites acharacter raster and utimalthe
>>> he Os picks the up and flushes it out to a pixel raster. And that'
>>> aal it's doing. Whilst on a modrern syste, stdout can do whole lot
>>> of intricate things.
>>
>> That is a whole lot of typos...
>>
>>
>> But, even if it is built calling MSVCRT as a DLL (rather than static
>> linked), modern MSVC is still the worst of the bunch in this area.
>>
>> A build as RISC-V + PIE with a static-linked C library still manages
>> to be smaller than an x64 build via MSVC with entirely dynamic-linked
>> libraries.
>>
>> And, around 72% bigger than the same program built as a
>> dynamic-linked binary with "GCC -O3" (while also often still being
>> around 40% slower).
>>
> 
> GCC on Windows or on Linux?
> In my experience, gcc on Windows (ucrt64 variant, other gcc variants
> are worse) very consistently produces bigger (stripped) exe than even
> latest MSVCs which, as you correctly stated, are not as good as older
> versions at producing small code.
> 
> The size of 'Hello, world' program (x86-64, dynamically linked C RTL)
> vs2013 - 6,144 bytes
> vs2019 - 9,216 bytes
> gcc (Debian Linux, -no-pie) - 14,400 bytes
> gcc (Debian Linux) - 14,472 bytes
> gcc (ucrt64 DLL) - 18,432 bytes
> gcc (old DLL) - 42,496 bytes

I get a lot worse than that:

    C:\c>gcc hello.c

    C:\c>dir a.exe
    09/06/2024  11:04           367,349 a.exe

    C:\c>gcc hello.c -s -Os

    C:\c>dir a.exe
    09/06/2024  11:04            88,064 a.exe

(It didn't like -Oz; did you mean something other than -Os?)

Both import msvcrt.dll. gcc is version 10.3.0.

tcc gives 2KB, and mcc gives 2.5KB.

(With the latter, I know it is because it uses a comprises 5 blocks of 
data each of which is at least 512 bytes: 2 for header stuff, plus 
always 3 segments. The mininum hello.exe size I think is 700 bytes if a 
few corners are cut.)

367KB sounds astonishing, but the first time I tried Dart, it gave me a 
5MB executable for 'hello.dart'.