From: Jeremy Hinegardner <jeremy@...>
Date: 2008-12-02T05:12:25+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] crate 0.1.1 Released

On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 04:26:39AM +0900, Avdi Grimm wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:12 PM, Jeremy Hinegardner
> <jeremy@hinegardner.org> wrote:
> 
> > Crate is a tool to help package up your application as a custom static
> > build of the ruby interpreter plus all dependant binary extensions.
> > All the pure ruby code (the ruby application, the ruby stdlib, etc) is
> > packed into one or more SQLite databases.
> 
> Stupid question: what's the advantage of using a SQLite DB over a
> tarball or zip file?

Stupid answer: I really have no idea.  I didn't even think about it.

One of the requirements I set for myself on this one was that there
would be no 'unpacking' of the ruby source code onto the deployed file
system.   That, and I just like the idea of requiring ruby code that is
really a row in an sqlite database :-).

You could overwrite require to open up an archive file of some format
and load the ruby file, and I see no reason why someone shouldn't write
that.  Rubyscript2exe takes this appraoch, and unpacks the .rb files to
the file system.

Off the top of my head, the main advantage I see of using sqlite over
zip/tar file is your application gets the free bonus of having a built
in relation database with no extra cost.

There may be some performance advantage for require in that it only has
to do a select from a db, vs open up .zip file for ever require, but I
won't consider that a valid argument at this point.  

enjoy,

-jeremy

-- 
========================================================================
 Jeremy Hinegardner                              jeremy@hinegardner.org