SemiOT: Mourning for Classic Computing

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Thu Aug 23 16:17:56 2001

It was thus said that the Great Eric J. Korpela once stated:
>
> > I did
> >
> > #include <stdlib.h>
> >
> > int main(void) { return(EXIT_SUCCESS); } /* [1] */
> >
> > A static link made a binary of 435,031 bytes, and dynamically linking is
> > around 3k (using the default options). So that's the overhead (at least
> > under RedHat 5.2).
> >
> > -spc (Still a bit large to me ... )
>
> Given that you are still linking in ctr0.o and libc, it's not surprising
> that it's huge. I'd suggest the following steps... Rename main() to start().
> Compile the C to assembly (-S option to gcc). Edit the assembly file to
> remove all the unnecessary stuff. Assemble the file using "as". Link the
> object using "ld".

  That's the overhead for using the Standard C Library. The minimum seems
to be around 300 bytes or so, mostly for the executable section headers.

  Besides, when I generated the assembly code for the above file (using
``gcc -S -O4 -fomit-frame-pointer h4.c'') I got:
        
                .file "h4.c"
                .version "01.01"
        gcc2_compiled.:
        .text
                .align 4
        .globl main
                .type main,_at_function
        main:
                xorl %eax,%eax
                ret
        .Lfe1:
                .size main,.Lfe1-main
                .ident "GCC: (GNU) 2.7.2.3"

  There's not much left to take out 8-)

  -spc (GCC is actually a fairly decent C compiler)
Received on Thu Aug 23 2001 - 16:17:56 BST