Nim binary size

"Hello, World!" binary size in Nim.

Instructions

Run

nim c -r build.nim

which compiles the Nim program

echo "Hello, World!"

with various sets of compilation options.

Results

-d:release1	LTO2	strip3	--opt:size4	statically link	Linux	macOS	Windows
					98.2 KiB	109.4 KiB	188.7 KiB
✔️					67.3 KiB	71.7 KiB	151.5 KiB
✔️	✔️				39.5 KiB	67.6 KiB	132.0 KiB
✔️	✔️	✔️			34.5 KiB	65.1 KiB	79.5 KiB
✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️		26.5 KiB	49.1 KiB	64.0 KiB
✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	via musl-gcc5	30.0 KiB
✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	via musl-clang6	30.0 KiB
✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	via zig cc7	6.1 KiB

Details

All results from 2023-03-31 on x86_64 with Nim 2.0 nightly release 2023-03-30 (corresponding to a Nim compiler built from commit nim-lang/Nim@2e4ba4a).

Linux

• Arch Linux
• glibc 2.37
• gcc 12.2.1
• clang 15.0.7
• musl 1.2.3
• zig 0.10.1

macOS

• macOS 12
• clang 14.0.0

Windows

• Windows Server 2022
• Mingw-w64 11.2.0

Footnotes

1. Perform a release build: -d:release (the default is a debug build) ↩

2. Enable Link-Time Optimization: --passC:-flto --passL:-flto ↩

3. Remove debug symbols: --passL:-s ↩

4. Optimize for reduced binary size: --opt:size (the default is --opt:speed) ↩

5. Add --cc:gcc --gcc.exe:musl-gcc --gcc.linkerexe:musl-gcc --passL:-static ↩

6. Add --cc:clang --clang.exe:musl-clang --clang.linkerexe:musl-clang --passL:-static ↩

7. Add --panics:on -d:useMalloc --os:any -d:posix -d:noSignalHandler --cc=clang --clang.exe='zigcc' --clang.linkerexe='zigcc' --passC:'-target x86_64-linux-musl' --passL:'-target x86_64-linux-musl' ↩