A C program is going to want to pull in at least a C run-time (crt0 is one common name for that link file). Consider this minimal C program:
extern void exit(int); void main (int argc, char **argv) { exit(0); } It is 73 bytes as a .c file and 408 bytes in a .o. It I link it, doing what gcc defaultly does, the resulting file is 49750 bytes. (This is all under cygwin, with gcc 4.5.3. It *dynamically* links to: Windows/SysWOW/ntdll.dll = 1292080 bytes Windows/syswow64/kernel32.dll = 1114112 bytes Windows/syswow64/KERNELBASE.dll = 274944 bytes cygwin1.dll = 2858355 bytes So, the program itself is small, but potentially has access to many resources through these dlls that are shared with other programs. I guess I don't see what your objection is regarding size of things, unless you feel 49750 is "too darn much". Ok, so after I strip the program to remove symbol info needed only when debugging, the size is 4622. By running with gcc -v, I see it links in: crt0.o = crtbegin.o = crtend.o = and scans the C libraries for things my program, or these, call. This includes linkage (at least) to malloc/free, etc., needed in the startup and shutdown, I believe. Now I add: #include <stdio.h> and, in main, putchar('h'); Unstripped the size is a little bigger, 50188. Stripped it is (guess what): 4622 bytes. ldd shows that it will use the same dynamically linked dlls as the original. So I'm struggling to see what it is you want / expect here. The dlls get shared in memory between programs, and once stripped, the programs can be quite small -- depending on what you use. And even if you code directly to Windows interfaces and use some other tool suite, you will end up with the Windows dlls in any case, since that's how you talk to the OS to get anything done. Regards -- Eliot Moss -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple