From: Mark Roseman <mark@...>
Date: 2007-12-21T21:25:03+09:00
Subject: Re: best way to distribute?

 Cameron McBride <cameron.mcbride@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Isn't this exactly what rubyscript2exe does?
> > http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/
> 
> Sounds like it to me, although I don't know starpacks at all.


Hi Cameron,

No, starkits and starpacks are actually much more powerful and 
versatile.  The Tcl world had the equivalent of rubyscript2exe for years 
and years, but when starkits and starpacks came out it everyone found it 
a huge step forward when it came to deployment.

Among the advantages:
   * ship a single file platform-specific executable (as per *2exe)
   * ship a single file platform-neutral application, which can then be 
run with a (single file) platform-specific but application-neutral 
binary; in other words, your entire language runtime can be in a single 
file you can just download, and use for many applications
   * no changing your code... because starkits are based on a virtual 
file system, you refer to files "in" the starkit exactly the same as you 
would normal files on disk, using standard I/O commands.  so that is 
both scripts, data files, etc.
   * starkits can be used as a way to distribute source, again all in 
one file; people can grab the starkit, unpack it, make some changes, 
pack it up again
   * source can be optionally protected (i.e. you can't get the original 
scripts back) using a compiler, which is actually a separate and 
complementary tool

Mark