How to generate statically linked executables?

Question

I am trying to create a static executable with Rust. I am not trying to statically link a particular library, I am trying to create a executable which does not use dynamic linking at all. I have the following (otherwise working) test:

$ cat hello.rs fn main()     {     print!("Hello, world!\n");     } $ rustc hello.rs -o hello $ file hello hello: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),  dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, [etc] 

Note the dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2. Static executables have statically linked instead. (And in my case corrupted section header size, although I would be pleasantly astonished if I can convince Rust to replicate that.)

What options do I need to pass to rustc to get it to generate a actual static executable (for concreteness: one which even file agrees is statically linked).

Answer 1

Since Rust 1.19, you can statically link the C runtime (CRT) to avoid this very common situation on Windows:

The program can't start because VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

Add this to your .cargo/config file, using the appropriate target triple for your platform:

[target.x86_64-pc-windows-msvc] rustflags = ["-C", "target-feature=+crt-static"] 

An alternative to editing .cargo/config is to pass -C target-feature=+crt-static to rustc by hand.

See also:

• RFC

• Pull Request

• Cargo config documentation

Answer 2

Rust statically links everything but glibc (and libgcc, iirc) by default.

If you want to get a 100% statically linked binary, you can use MUSL with 1.1. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/24777 is the initial support, we hope to make it much easier to use in the future.