A tiny (less than 2k!) EXE that forwards its arguments on to the Windows built-in powershell.exe (legacy Windows PowerShell 5.1), then waits for it to exit, and returns powershell.exe's return code as its own.
I was creating a winget package manifest, and the "installer" that I wanted to wrap was just a script... but winget needs to get something that it can run (executing a .ps1 just opens it in a text editor), and it really wants to download that thing from the interwebs. So I provided it something to run, downloadable, in the form of PowershellStub.exe. You are welcome to use it, too, if you like (see the WingetPathUpdater manifest for example usage).
If you search for information about how to create tiny EXEs, you'll see that I didn't go nearly as far as some people do! But I'm not trying to win a contest; anything under 4k would have been fine with me, so that the whole image can fit into a single page of memory.
Techniques I used:
- All the compiler/linker optimization switches on, and favoring "size" over "speed".
- Don't link any default libs (not even the C runtime--
maingets no args!). - Combine the
.pdatasection with the.textsection. - Reduced section alignment (128).
- Turn off unneeded things (randomized base address, debug info, etc.).