From: Ron Fox <fox@...>
Date: 2007-12-20T22:29:59+09:00
Subject: Re: best way to distribute?

    This is more to the 'gods of ruby' than a reply.  Tcl/Tk has a nice 
way   to do stuff like this called Starpacks.  This is possible using 
the Tcl/Tk virtual file system hooks.  Starpacks are executables that 
consist of the intepreter, necessary compiled packages, and a virtual
file system appended to the back end of the executable that contains the 
script, scripted packages and loadable binaries.

   A similar sort of thing for Ruby might be a _good_ thing.  The 
seminal paper on starpacks and the related starkit (the virtual 
filesystem unbundled from the run-time) is at:

http://www.equi4.com/papers/skpaper1.html

if any of the ruby gods are interested.

Please don't read this as a Tcl/Tk plug... just a comment that other 
scripted languages had to face this and here's one solution that another 
scripting language came up with that may apply here.

Ron.

Pavel Pvl wrote:
> hi, what is the best way to distribute ruby apps without having the end
> user need to download ruby?
> 
> i have looked into:
> tar2ruby
> exerb
> and Xruby
> 
> however they seem difficult to use, after trying and failing. are there
> other solutions? or any guides? for such an amazing language, ruby is
> very difficult to compile to a standalone.