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bloaty
C++2016–2026
google / bloaty

bloaty

Bloaty: a size profiler for binaries

Testing & Quality
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
20Distinct people
31Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
5.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Bloaty: a size profiler for binaries

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Since we're talking about ELF binaries, let me drop a link for my favorite size profiler (that is compatible with ELF and other formats): Bloaty McBloatface.…

fnayr used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year31 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-11-08 19:50:38 UTC to 2026-01-06 20:02:22 UTC.

02462016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 4 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC743
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

2 sources
haberman·May 16, 2019
I wrote Bloaty (https://github.com/google/bloaty) which involved writing a totally custom ELF file parser. Here are some epiphanies I had about ELF while writing it. ELF (and Mach-O, PE, etc) are designed to optimize the creation of a process image. The runtime loader mainly just has to mmap() a bunch of file ranges into memory with various permissions. This is quite different than loading a .jar file, .pyc, etc. which involve building a runtime heap and loading objects into that heap. ELF has two file-level tables: sections and segments (the latter are also called program headers). Things clicked for me when I realized: sections are for the linker and segments are for the runtime loader. Sections are the atomic unit of data that linkers operate on: the linker will never rearrange data within a section (it may concatenate several inp
Read the rest
ut sections into a single output section though). The loader doesn't even look at the section table AFAIK, everything needed to load the binary is put into segments / program headers. Only some parts of the binary are actually read/loaded when the binary is executed. Debugging info may bloat the binary but it doesn't cost any RAM at runtime because it's never loaded unless you run a debugger. Bloaty makes this clear by showing both VM size and file size: https://github.com/google/bloaty#running-bloaty
In ELF files on Linux

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