How to reduce compiled file size?

Question

Lets compare c and go: Hello_world.c :

#include<stdio.h> int main(){     printf("Hello world!"); } 

Hello_world.go:

package main import "fmt" func main(){     fmt.Printf("Hello world!") } 

Compile both:

$gcc Hello_world.c -o Hello_c  $8g Hello_world.go -o Hello_go.8 $8l Hello_go.8 -o Hello_go 

and ... what is it?

$ls -ls ... 5,4K 2010-10-05 11:09 Hello_c ... 991K 2010-10-05 11:17 Hello_go 

About 1Mb Hello world. Are you kidding me? What I do wrong?

(strip Hello_go -> 893K only)

Answer 1

If you are using a Unix-based system (e.g. Linux or Mac OSX) you could try removing the debugging information included in the executable by building it with the -w flag:

go build -ldflags "-w" prog.go 

The file sizes are reduced dramatically.

For more details visit the GDB's page: http://golang.org/doc/gdb

Answer 2

The 2016 answer:

1. Use Go 1.7

2. Compile with go build -ldflags "-s -w"

➜ ls -lh hello -rwxr-xr-x 1 oneofone oneofone 976K May 26 20:49 hello* 

3. Then use upx, goupx is no longer needed since 1.6.

➜ ls -lh hello -rwxr-xr-x 1 oneofone oneofone 367K May 26 20:49 hello*