Eliminating static binaries (Was: Unwanted RPM dependencies)

[Denis Leroy]

Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 08:41:26AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
>> You should probably test that before you post.  I would say this is the
>> smallest possible regular C program:
>>
>> $ cat x.c
>> int main ()
>> {
>> 	return 0;
>> }
>> $ gcc -o x-dyn x.c
>> $ gcc -static -o x-stat x.c
>> $ strip x-dyn x-stat
>> $ ls -l x-dyn x-stat
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 cmadams users   2816 Jun  6 08:38 x-dyn
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 cmadams users 459492 Jun  6 08:38 x-stat
>> $ 
>>
>> I don't forsee a static executable being smaller than a dynamic
>> executable in the real world.  It is possible that somebody could
>> hand-build (e.g. no gcc, ld, etc.) such an executable, but that doesn't
>> really count (since that isn't done in the real world).
> 
> given that the dynamic executable is 2816 bytes, the static one could be 
> smaller, however it is way bigger. In fact it seems to me (but I don't
> rerally know a lot about those things, I was only saying something I saw
> elsewhere) that it is way too bigger for that difference to be explained by 
> static linking, there is something else happening there. 

I believe the granularity of the linker is a single object file. So even 
  if you use just a small routine within a big object file, the whole 
thing is linked with (if you think about how ld works internally and 
what it has to do, it makes sense).