From: Oleg Barenboim Date: 2006-11-25T10:51:19+09:00 Subject: VFS, Starkits and Starpacks Hi, I am new to Ruby. So far, I am really enjoying the language. But, I am a bit concerned about packaging applications written in Ruby. Has there been any thought to implementing something like Tcl's VFS (see http://wiki.tcl.tk/2138)? The VFS support allows for virtualizing the file system calls to more naturally program things that are remote (HTTP or FTP) and local (zip and tar files). Using this functionality, the Tcl community was able to create starkits (originally with zip files and now with metakit (http://equi4.com/metakit.html) files). A Starkit (http://equi4.com/starkit.html) creates the illusion of a "file system in a file" - on the outside, it's a single file, yet the application code continues to see a complete directory of scripts, extensions, packages, images, and whatever other files it needs. Starkits can be multi-platform. After the success of starkits, they were able to wrap up everything into a single executable that they call starpacks (http://wiki.tcl.tk/3663). This allows for the delivery of an application as a single file that, for the most part, does not need to be unpacked to temporary locations because the Tcl core has VFS that allows it to look introspectively into the executable. I am not bashing Ruby. I have looked at RubyScript2exe and think it is a great start. It would be great if a more robust solution were available to allow for clean packaging of Ruby applications. Thanks, Oleg -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.