From: Lennon Day-Reynolds <rcoder@...>
Date: 2004-07-07T23:10:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Secure Ruby Compiler

Lothar,

First, it's worth noting that applications implemented in Ruby usually
(though not always) have much smaller file sizes than equivalent
"native" binaries, since the only download needed is the source code
(which is itself quite compact due to Ruby's compact syntax). In
addition, the entire Ruby runtime is a smaller download than any
recent JRE or Python distribution; with a little judicious pruning, it
could almost certainly be reduced further.

If you're targeting Windows, then I highly recommend Exerb. Along with
UPX, (an executable "packer", which transparently compresses binaries)
I've used it to produce standalone Windows EXE files from Ruby scripts
which were 200-300KB in size. With a full GUI toolkit, you should
still be able to come in around the 1MB mark.

One interesting offshoot of the PP installer distribution of Ruby
might be an ActiveX control version of Ruby, optimized for size. I
think that it should be entirely possible to produce a (mostly) static
binary, compressed with UPX, well under 1MB in size. That would
greatly simplify the requirements for distributing Ruby applications
on Windows, which is where users are likely to be the most put off by
the need to install any additional software.

Just my $0.02.

Lennon