Sprymicro

This is a demonstration of compiling minimal Spry interpreters.

• sprymin.nim - A minimal core Spry interpreter that can still read a file
• sprymicro.nim - As small as it can get, source is embedded instead of accessed as file

Going small

The Spry interpreter is fairly small, but it does include the Nim soft realtime GC so we can't go ultra small. But using for example musl-libc or diet-libc you can make a statically linked stripped 64 bit x86_64 VM that is only around 100kb. Clang makes a smaller non-size optimized binary, but larger size optimized.

musl-libc

If you want to try building with musl-libc (which seems to be the most competent small libc) you need to install musl-dev and then use a build command like this:

nim -d:release --opt:size --passL:-static --gcc.exe:musl-gcc --gcc.linkerexe:musl-gcc c sprymin && strip -s sprymin

diet-libc

If you want to try building with diet-libc you need to install dietlibc-dev and add this file:

gokr@yoda:~$ cat /usr/bin/dietgcc diet gcc $@

...then use a build command like this:

nim -d:release --opt:size --passL:-static --gcc.exe:dietgcc --gcc.linkerexe:dietgcc c sprymin && strip -s sprymin

On my machine that produces a sprymin around 122kb and sprymicro around 114kb.