$ cat hello.c int main() { printf("Hello, world!\n"); } $ gcc hello.c $ ls -l a....

morsch · on Oct 11, 2011

See here for an effort to create the smallest possible hello world x86 ELF binary: http://timelessname.com/elfbin/

His original C app was about 6k, and 3k when stripped of debug symbols. Not content, he switched to assembly, which got him down to ... nah, I won't spoil the rest. ;)

dramaticus3 · on Oct 11, 2011

That's dynamically loaded, try it with the runtime

    $ gcc hello.c
    $ ls -l a.out
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 maht maht 4511 Oct 11 16:38 a.out
    $ gcc --static hello.c
    $ ls -l a.out
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 maht maht 574106 Oct 11 16:38 a.out