From: Patrik Sundberg <ps@...>
Date: 2001-12-18T19:22:58+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:28858] Re: [IDEA] creating stand-alone versions for easy distribution etc

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 07:04:09PM +0900, Robert Feldt wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Patrik Sundberg wrote:
> 
> > hi list,
> > 
> Hi Patrik,
> 
> > I was looking around for a way to package a ruby-app of mine for easy
> > distribution to some of my non-ruby/non-programmer friends. I didn't come
> > across anything other than a program by Robert Feldt which was Windows only. I
> > wasn't happy and searched further among other scrpting languages and came
> >
> I think better methods for this are needed so would be great if you have
> the time to work on this!

we'll have to see about the time left to work on this :) but i agree that this
actually is quite an important task.

> > across something from the Python community called 'Installer':
> > http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install5_ann.html
> > 
> Could you summarize the method they use? I couldn't find a clear
> description on the web page. The stuff about archives and appending to an
> exe sounds very much like what rbwrap does. But it was a quick hack for a
> specific need so may not be something you can use. If you can then feel
> free to steal!

i actually didn't look into your rbwrap since i recall it was windows only. at
a closer look it might be a lot like what the python application does, in
principle at least.

a description of their approach is at:
http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/standalones.html

> > To me this seems very doable for ruby too, and a direct port not that hard.
> > Anyone has any thoughts on this? I will probably start looking into this
> > during the holidays if no one else does before.
> > 
> Great, good luck!
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing about any better ways to find dependencies of
> a Ruby program you find. The approach used by rbwrap is a bit crude: run
> the script to be wrapped and see what is added to '$.'. The user can also
> explicitly name files that should be included. You might want to check out
> the design document in rbwrap to see some ways to do (and not do!?) it. I
> guess the main other approaches would be to parse all the source files and
> analyze them (overkill) or hook into require/load. But there might be
> other ways?
> 
> Would be great if your solution would work together with the UPX
> packer (there were some quirks when I tried to get it to work with
> rbwrap but I don't remember the details). UPX works great and can often
> reduce the size of executables to 25-40%. And start times can be faster
> than without compression since CPU's are fast and discs may not be. And
> the uncompress alg is coded in assembler and very fast. And UPX works with
> ELF files also (in fact it works on very many platforms). See upx.sf.net.

i'll look into UPX, never heard of it before.

-- 
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Patrik Sundberg    Address: Rydsv�gen 100C, 584 31 Link�ping, Sweden       |
                   Email:   ps@raditex.se || ps@radiac.mine.nu             |
                   Phone:   +46 13 178567 || +46 707 602240                |
.---> Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering student                   |
|-----> Master of Science in Business Administration and Economics student |
|-------> UNIX/Programming consultant                                      |
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