[gregjor]

C, Rust, Go binaries are not containers, if you mean something like Docker. A VM is not a container either. You need to make a clearer distinction between compiled languages with no runtime (C), compiled languages with a runtime component (Go, Rust), languages that run in an interpreter with a runtime component (Python, Ruby, PHP), languages that run in a VM (Java, C#), and containers (Docker). You can run anything in a Docker container but you don't have to.

[nighmi]

How could I make that clearer? I explicitly asked about what language ecosystems offer the snallest production containers and gave examples.

[gregjor]

Your question was not clear to me because it conflates containers (Docker) with runtimes and VMs.

No container at all will give the smallest production container, so a compiled language with no runtime (C) or one with a small runtime (Go) answers your question.

If you must use containers for some reason, the container stuff (e.g. Docker) imposes a constant overhead regardless of the contents, so you can set that aside and just add up the size of the application binary plus runtime plus dependencies. C will likely come out at the top of the list, .NET and Java at the bottom.

[gregjor]

See this: https://tech-couch.com/post/producing-smaller-docker-images-...

Techniques described would apply to any application language.