Simple helloworld binary on windows,darwin and fedora is about 1.2M but on CentOS 5.7 it is only 223K.

[tjyang]

I was assuming there will be an effort to reduce generated binary size later but I don't
understand why same weekly go src generated go compiler produce smaller binary file on
CentOS 5.7 ?

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. helloworld is 1.2M on win 7.
C:\goweekly\gocode\src\hello>go build -x helloworld.go
WORK=C:\Users\aty010\AppData\Local\Temp\go-build072947126
mkdir -p $WORK\_\helloworld\_obj\
cd $GOROOT\gocode\src\hello/.
$GOROOT\pkg\tool\windows_386\8g.exe -o $WORK\_\helloworld\_obj\_go_.8 -p _/hello
world -I $WORK $GOROOT\gocode\src\hello\helloworld.go
$GOROOT\pkg\tool\windows_386\pack.exe grc $WORK\_\helloworld.a $WORK\_\helloworl
d\_obj\_go_.8
$GOROOT\pkg\tool\windows_386\8l.exe -o $WORK\_\helloworld\_obj\a.out.exe -L $WOR
K $WORK\_\helloworld.a
cp $WORK\_\helloworld\_obj\a.out.exe helloworld.exe

C:\goweekly\gocode\src\hello>ls -rt
helloworld.go  helloworld.exe

C:\goweekly\gocode\src\hello>ls -lrt
total 598
-rw-r--r--    1 ATY010   Administ       75 Feb  3 13:53 helloworld.go
-rwxr-xr-x    1 ATY010   Administ  1222144 Mar  3 23:01 helloworld.exe

C:\goweekly\gocode\src\hello>go version
go version weekly.2012-02-22 +eb997f446b2e

C:\goweekly\gocode\src\hello>


2. helloworld is 1.2M on fedora 16.
[weekly@640m hw]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 16 (Verne)
[weekly@640m hw]$

[weekly@640m hw]$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=/usr/bin/gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/i686-redhat-linux/4.6.2/lto-wrapper
Target: i686-redhat-linux
Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man
--infodir=/usr/share/info --with-bugurl=http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla
--enable-bootstrap --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-checking=release
--with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-libunwind-exceptions
--enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-linker-build-id
--enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,java,fortran,ada,go,lto --enable-plugin
--enable-java-awt=gtk --disable-dssi
--with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-1.5.0.0/jre --enable-libgcj-multifile
--enable-java-maintainer-mode --with-ecj-jar=/usr/share/java/eclipse-ecj.jar
--disable-libjava-multilib --with-ppl --with-cloog --with-tune=generic --with-arch=i686
--build=i686-redhat-linux
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.6.2 20111027 (Red Hat 4.6.2-1) (GCC)
[weekly@640m hw]$ ls -l hw*
-rwxrwxr-x  1 weekly weekly 1261540 Mar  3 22:41 hw
-rw-rw-r--. 1 weekly weekly      81 Feb  7 17:29 hw.go
[weekly@640m hw]$ pwd
/home/weekly/gocode/src/hw
[weekly@640m hw]$

What is the expected output?



[root@learn hw]# go build -x helloworld.go
WORK=/tmp/go-build828264604
mkdir -p $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/
cd $GOROOTcode/src/hw/.
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/linux_386/8g -o $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/_go_.8 -p _/helloworld -I $WORK
$GOROOTcode/src/hw/helloworld.go
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/linux_386/pack grc $WORK/_/helloworld.a $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/_go_.8
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/linux_386/8l -o $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/a.out -L $WORK
$WORK/_/helloworld.a
cp $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/a.out helloworld
[root@learn hw]# ls -lrt
total 232
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    272 Mar  3 20:39 helloworld.go
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 227865 Mar  3 20:51 helloworld
[root@learn hw]# ./helloworld
hello, world
[root@learn hw]# pwd
/root/gocode/src/hw
[root@learn hw]# pwd
/root/gocode/src/hw
[root@learn hw]# go version
go version weekly.2012-02-22 +96bd78e7d35e
[root@learn hw]# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 5.7 (Final)
[root@learn hw]# gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: i386-redhat-linux
Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man
--infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix
--enable-checking=release --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit
--disable-libunwind-exceptions --enable-libgcj-multifile
--enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,java,fortran,ada --enable-java-awt=gtk
--disable-dssi --disable-plugin --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.4.2-gcj-1.4.2.0/jre
--with-cpu=generic --host=i386-redhat-linux
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-51)
[root@learn hw]#

3. helloworld binary on Darwin is 1.3M.

imac:hello weekly$ go build -x helloworld.go
WORK=/tmp/go-build930742753
mkdir -p $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/
cd $GOROOTcode/src/hello/.
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64/6g -o $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/_go_.6 -p _/helloworld -I
$WORK $GOROOTcode/src/hello/helloworld.go
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64/pack grc $WORK/_/helloworld.a
$WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/_go_.6
$GOROOT/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64/6l -o $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/a.out -L $WORK
$WORK/_/helloworld.a
cp $WORK/_/helloworld/_obj/a.out helloworld
imac:hello weekly$ ls -lrt
total 2520
-rw-r--r--  1 weekly  staff       82 Mar  3 23:11 helloworld.go
-rwxr-xr-x  1 weekly  staff  1282064 Mar  3 23:11 helloworld
imac:hello weekly$ go version
go version weekly.2012-02-22 +96bd78e7d35e
imac:hello weekly$

What do you see instead?


Which compiler are you using (5g, 6g, 8g, gccgo)?


Which operating system are you using?


Which revision are you using?  (hg identify)


Please provide any additional information below.

[dsymonds]

Comment 1:

Labels changed: added priority-later, performance, removed priority-triage.

[tjyang]

Comment 2:

I guess the reason why weekly-02-22 go compiler on centos 5.7 generate smaller binary is
because the debug info was stripped out.  As it said in following log. But doing a code
listing still list out source code. 
[root@learn hw]# gdb helloworld
GNU gdb (GDB) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (7.0.1-37.el5_7.1)
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>;
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>;...
Reading symbols from /root/gocode/src/hw/helloworld...(no debugging symbols
found)...done.
(gdb) l
1       // cmpout
2
3       // Copyright 2009 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
4       // Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
5       // license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
6
7       // Test that we can do page 1 of the C book.
8
9       package main
10
(gdb) l
11      func main() {
12              print("hello, world\n")
13      }
(gdb) l
Line number 14 out of range; /root/gocode/src/hw/helloworld.go has 13 lines.
(gdb)

[rsc]

Comment 3:

Go binaries are statically linked, mostly by design, so they
contain things like the formatted print library and garbage collector,
as well as runtime type information and such.
This C program is 744kB on my Linux system, statically linked:
#include <stdio.h>
int
main(void)
{
    printf("hello, world - %g\n", 3.14);
    return 0;
}
When you consider how much more Go is doing, 1.2 MB is not terrible.
Russ

Status changed to Unfortunate.