438-byte "Hello, world" Win32 EXE in D

I've picked up an older project for using D on barebones Win32 as a "better C".

Thanks to recent advances in DMD (-betterC and -m32mscoff), I could get a "Hello, world" program on Win32 down to just 438 bytes when compiled. This is without assembly, linker scripts, custom Phobos/Druntime, or manual post-build tweaks.

-betterC allows stripping things like ModuleInfo, and as of recently it also strips file/module names used for asserts/range check errors (which were emitted even in -release mode). A better alternative would be a DMD equivalent to -fdata-sections, though, so unneeded variables, constants, and data generated by the compiler could be garbage-collected by the linker.

-m32mscoff allows using more linkers. Specifically, the Microsoft Linker and Crinkler, which only understand COFF, can both generate executables which are much smaller than those created by OPTLINK.

The 438-byte "Hello, world" program is achieved using Crinkler, which is a COFF linker with aggressive compression and header optimization. It was created for compressing 4K demos.

Without compression on header optimization, you can reach 630 bytes using Unilink, a freeware linker which is compatible with both COFF and OMF.

The source code is not much to look at, most of the "magic" is in the makefiles:

https://github.com/CyberShadow/SlimD

See samples/01-msgbox for more commentary. The figures above are for samples/02-console.

The motivation for this project is mostly hack value and aesthetical (a 500 KB EXE with 5 KB worth of actual functionality is not pretty).

On 9/7/14, 2:03 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote: > I've picked up an older project for using D on barebones Win32 as a > "better C". > > Thanks to recent advances in DMD (-betterC and -m32mscoff), I could get > a "Hello, world" program on Win32 down to just 438 bytes when compiled. > This is without assembly, linker scripts, custom Phobos/Druntime, or > manual post-build tweaks. Awesome. Blog post -> reddit -> win. -- Andrei

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 at 21:03:17 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote: > I've picked up an older project for using D on barebones Win32 as a "better C". > > Thanks to recent advances in DMD (-betterC and -m32mscoff), I could get a "Hello, world" program on Win32 down to just 438 bytes when compiled. This is without assembly, linker scripts, custom Phobos/Druntime, or manual post-build tweaks. YES. That's what I expect to be possible with a systems programming language! Very pleasing to see that it is also possible with D, so D seems to be really a systems programming language :-)

On 9/7/14, Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote: > Thanks to recent advances in DMD (-betterC and -m32mscoff), I could get a "Hello, world" program on Win32 down to just 438 bytes when compiled. This is without assembly, linker scripts, custom Phobos/Druntime, or manual post-build tweaks. I guess this is great news for virus writers. :P And, I guess scene devs. ^^

On Monday, 8 September 2014 at 07:01:19 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > On 9/7/14, Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d-announce > <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote: > I guess this is great news for virus writers. :P A std.virus or core.virus module? ;;) Nothing sweeter than having it as a standard...

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 at 21:03:17 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote: > > The 438-byte "Hello, world" program is achieved using Crinkler, which is a COFF linker with aggressive compression and header optimization. It was created for compressing 4K demos. > Pretty cool! Up to now D had little chance to compete in 4k and 64k demo competitions because of the inability to use Crinkler.

On Monday, 8 September 2014 at 07:01:19 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > I guess this is great news for virus writers. :P Why? Modern viruses are bloatware: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/73559b15d1f55a9f08a5674fd4320a7ba9ff4e98f0949a1b2a756ec8eafd5caf/analysis/

On Monday, 8 September 2014 at 07:40:29 UTC, Kagamin wrote: > Why? Modern viruses are bloatware: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/73559b15d1f55a9f08a5674fd4320a7ba9ff4e98f0949a1b2a756ec8eafd5caf/analysis/ That sucks. «Smallest PE file that downloads a file over WebDAV and executes it: 133 bytes» http://www.phreedom.org/research/tinype/

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 at 21:03:17 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote: > The 438-byte "Hello, world" program is achieved using Crinkler, which is a COFF linker with aggressive compression and header optimization. It was created for compressing 4K demos. Pretty nice! Is the format correct too, or can it break on OS upgrades?

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