A deep dive into minimizing the size of a gcc-compiled C executable, starting from a simple 'return 0' program at 15,816 bytes. Through a series of compiler flags and code manipulations — stripping debug info, removing pre-main boilerplate, eliminating unnecessary libraries, error handling, and memory allocation code — the binary is reduced all the way down to 400 bytes. The write-up documents each step and the techniques used to achieve this dramatic reduction.
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