Smaller Go 1.7 binaries

[Punani Futanari ☪]

Go was designed for writing servers. That is how it is most widely used today, and as a result a lot of work on the runtime and compiler is focused on issues that matter to servers: latency, ease of deployment, precise garbage collection, fast startup time, performance.

As Go gets used for a wider variety of programs, there are new issues that must be considered. One of these is binary size. It has been on the radar for a long time (issue #6853 was filed over two years ago), but the growing interest in using Go for deploying binaries on smaller devices — such as the Raspberry Pi or mobile devices — means it received some attention for the Go 1.7 release.