[elihu]

It might not matter to an individual user or developer, but if Rust is to be successful in the long run I think it's important for Rust-based desktop applications to be adopted.

If an application wants to be included in the standard install of, say, Ubuntu, one of the biggest costs from the Ubuntu maintainer's point of view is going to be "how much space will this take up on the iso, and what are we going to have to remove if we include this?" If the binaries are very small, it's a lot easier to make the case that they should be included.

[steveklabnik]

It's easier for a distro to do dynamic linking for Rust binaries, since they can mandate a single compiler version across the ecosystem.

[elihu]

True. If dynamic linking is all that's needed to get tiny binaries, then that's probably sufficient from the distro's point of view.