From: Steven Haryanto <steven@...>
Date: 2001-05-15T20:26:53+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:15154] Re: bytecode compilation

On 5/15/2001 01:34 AM, Sean Russell wrote:
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>Je Dimancxo 13 Majo 2001 15:53, vi skribis:
> > Not exactly what you want, but look at ruby2c (rb2c)
> > http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa-list.rhtml?name=rb2c
>
>This is a wonderful idea, but I have three problems with it: it only works
>with Ruby 1.4; the resulting executables are HUGE (but this could be a result
>of my linking options); and the executables seem to be no faster than the
>original script.
>
>I'm not complaining about rb2c; I just don't see the point of using it.

As the case with compiling other scripting languages, speed gain or
small binary is not achievable anyway, because your scripting language
code is not transformed into C, but merely packaged together with the
interpreter. All the dynamic scripting languages are very hard to
transform to C because of their nature. They still need the interpreter
runtime to operate.

So the benefits of "compilation" are:

1. packaging (making it easier for user)
2. source code hiding (making it harder to see/less obvious)

Regards,
Steve