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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T13:13:35+00:00

I cross compiled a more recent version of node.js (v0.8.14) for the Raspberry Pi.

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I cross compiled a more recent version of node.js (v0.8.14) for the Raspberry Pi.
Comparing the new version to the node v0.6.19 installed via apt-get, I was surprised that the size of the executable jumped from 1.2Mb to 6.2Mb.

Is the 5x increase in size due to

  • Newer version of node: v0.6.19 –> v0.6.19
  • GNU/Linux version: 2.6.26 –> 3.5.0
  • something else?
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ /usr/bin/node -v; ll -h /usr/bin/node; file /usr/bin/node
v0.6.19
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.2M Jun 30 18:55 /usr/bin/node
/usr/bin/node: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), 
for GNU/Linux 2.6.26,uildID[sha1]=0xb29e21fbf3e8a7db733fbcd0539e593264d88c94, stripped

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ./node -v; ll -h ./node; file ./node
v0.8.14
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 6.2M Oct 28 20:43 ./node
./node: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), 
for GNU/Linux 3.5.0, stripped
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    After taking a closer look at both binaries with readelf, the majority of the size increase is because the larger binary is using a number of statically linked code — the smaller binary is linked against more shared libraries.

    FYI: The shared libraries linked in the smaller node were [libssl.so.1.0.0], [libz.so.1], [libv8.so.3.8.9.20], [ld-linux-armhf.so.3], [libcares.so.2], [libcrypto.so.1.0.0], [libev.so.4], & [libutil.so.1].

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