> Where we're at in February 2015
Still producing 1.3M hello world executables.
I wonder if rewriting the linker from C to Go will be primarily rewriting, or maybe they will start fixing it somehow.
Still producing 1.3M hello world executables.
I wonder if rewriting the linker from C to Go will be primarily rewriting, or maybe they will start fixing it somehow.
The linkers in the gc tool chain (5l, 6l, and 8l) do static linking. All Go binaries therefore include the Go run-time, along with the run-time type information necessary to support dynamic type checks, reflection, and even panic-time stack traces.
A simple C "hello, world" program compiled and linked statically using gcc on Linux is around 750 kB, including an implementation of printf. An equivalent Go program using fmt.Printf is around 1.9 MB, but that includes more powerful run-time support and type information.
diet gcc -o hello hello.c; strip hello
2280 bytes on my system.
There are reasons why using glibc results in executables so big, and why it is tolerated (kind of). Those reasons hardly apply to a new language being actively developed. Yet said language produces executables almost twice the size.
"Run-time support and type information", why is it linked into a an executable that never allocates memory and does no introspection of any kind?
fmt.Print does use reflection.
Besides, bickering over the size of hello world is pretty pointless; better to compare the size of programs that actually do something.
We do recognise that Go binaries can and should be smaller, but probably not as small as you might hope.
"You call that a big binary? THIS..." etc
I'm actually racking my brain for a case where a 500kb vs 5Mb binary would be a deal breaker, outside of embedded stuff I can't think of much.
One of the major blockers to clojure in android is that the lack of treeshaking/deadcode elimination makes for 10 second+ startup times in most environments.
"The ideal size is 10-15MB globally. Idea size for an app for tier 2/3 countries (like India) is below 5MB. 500MB+ is a non-starter. At 50MB+ the conversion rates fall off dramatically."
I don't foresee any changes on this regard at Google IO.
My point is, on typical machines today, even a 10mb binary is not an issue at all.
It is not about the size of hello world executable, that is just a symptom. A code smell if you like. There is something badly broken in the dead code (or dead data) elimination area. And I hope that code is in fact dead, because if it is not, add code generation to the list of smelly things.
What I suspect I see here is a kind of C++ vtable problem built deep into the language design somewhere. And the reaction is, let's talk about large executables so that it would kinda become not so visible. Or maybe let's take a look at glibc, because glibc is definitely a paragon of clear design befitting a new language.
> fmt.Print does use reflection
There are two problems with this. The lesser one is why does it need reflection to print a string. The bigger one is why do I see about 600 reflect.* entries in the resulting ELF instead of a single one for the string type.
It doesn't print just strings. It can print anything. http://golang.org/src/fmt/print.go?s=6420:6467#L221
After doing your research, you're welcome to submit a magical CL and PR that brings down the binary sizes, then you won't need to argue anymore.
The original link is titled "The State of Go". The first thing I want to know about a state of a new language is whether it works. Then how well it works. Then, maybe, how to fix it and which VCS to use. There is an issue I think is within the range of these two questions, but it is not even mentioned there.
So to make life a bit easier for people who like me expect that issue to be discussed first, I posted a comment summarizing (in my opinion) the state of Go.
My thoughts on how to fix it are hardly relevant to the current state of Go.
> It doesn't print just strings. It can print anything.
The fact it is just a string should be statically (build-time) inferable in a strongly-typed language. Reflection, at least as I understand it, implies run-time type information. So the question does make sense. Yes, I understand why it may be needed for a particular implementation of printf, this is why I called it a lesser issue.
Not trying to be rude, but your uninformed opinion is less valuable than you think.
There is definitely work that can be done to improve dead code elimination in the Go tool chain. The transition to Go will make this easier to achieve.
> What I suspect I see here is a kind of C++ vtable problem built deep into the language design somewhere.
Don't suspect. Dig into the problem and make some informed commentary. Idly speculating on HN is just spreading FUD, and benefits no-one.
You should read about Go's implementation of interfaces. It's not the same as C++'s vtable issue. http://research.swtch.com/interfaces
Statically. Care to check "ldd hello" of your binary?
In case you wonder, that's dietlibc which is typically built with no dynamic linking capabilities whatsover.
1.3 megabytes. That's like $0.00004 USD worth of hard drive space.
Does the go team think we are all rich or something?
It's a tradeoff, and worth it in my opinion.
% du -k eval/eval
2040 eval/eval
% strip eval/eval
% du -k eval/eval
1864 eval/eval
Anyway it can be improved, but to me there are far more important things to be improved about Go than the binary size of small programs.
The code that actually executes is not bloated. It's not the most efficient code in the world, because the compilers don't have an optimizer as advanced as gcc's, but it's not unreasonably large.