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Comment by Narishma | Hacker News Reader

But C doesn't statically link the standard library by default like Rust does.

Hello world deps for C :

    linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff25cb8000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007fe5f08d9000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fe5f0ae2000)

And for Rust

    linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffc109f9000)
    libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f8eda404000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f8eda222000)
    /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f8eda4a8000)

Rather Rust has 1 more dynamically linked library than C.

That might be true for Hello World, but libgcc_s is where a lot of builtins for C itself go, so you'll find it ends up linked into a lot of non-trivial C programs as well. See https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gccint/Libgcc.html

You missed the word "statically" in the post you commented on.

Dynamically linked libs rarely contribute heavily to binary bloat

The benefit of statically linking becomes moot when it doesn't reduce the number of dynamically linked libraries. That's the point.

That's not why rust statically links the runtime. The main benefit is that they don't have to try to design and maintain a stable ABI for it. Which is not moot.

More generally, you statically link something to avoid distribution hassles of various kinds, not because you care about the specific number.

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