How to generate statically linked executables?

Question

I am trying to create a static executable with Rust. I am not trying to statically link a particular library, I am trying to create a executable which does not use dynamic linking at all. I have the following (otherwise working) test:

$ cat hello.rs
fn main()
    {
    print!("Hello, world!\n");
    }
$ rustc hello.rs -o hello
$ file hello
hello: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),
 dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, [etc]

Note the dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2. Static executables have statically linked instead. (And in my case corrupted section header size, although I would be pleasantly astonished if I can convince Rust to replicate that.)

What options do I need to pass to rustc to get it to generate a actual static executable (for concreteness: one which even file agrees is statically linked).

Answer 1

Since Rust 1.19, you can statically link the C runtime (CRT) to avoid this very common situation on Windows:

The program can't start because VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

Add this to your .cargo/config file, using the appropriate target triple for your platform:

[target.x86_64-pc-windows-msvc]
rustflags = ["-C", "target-feature=+crt-static"]

An alternative to editing .cargo/config is to pass -C target-feature=+crt-static to rustc by hand.

See also:

• RFC

• Pull Request

• Cargo config documentation