From: Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@...>
Date: 2003-08-19T03:53:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Distributing a application

> I'm thinking about distributing a application (a game, to be more
> specific) written in Ruby using the GTK+ library and ruby-gtk. Is
> there a way that I could distribute my application without having to
> distribute Ruby along? Or there's any other option I do not know about?
> 
> My application is meant to be used in any OS, so any hints for any OS
> would be helpful.
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> 
> Andr�


I've been thinking a lot about this myself.  This is the best I've come up 
with so far for Unix/Linux/Mac OS X:


*  Distribute a copy of ruby and all necessary libraries with your 
   program.

$ cp    your_app.rb     your_app/
$ cp    /usr/bin/ruby   your_app/bin
$ cp -r /usr/lib/ruby   your_app/lib/ruby

*  Include a shell script that will setup the appropriate environment and 
call your program:

$ cat >>your_app.sh
#!/bin/sh

export RUBYLIB="/opt/your_app/lib"
./ruby your_app.rb
$ 
$ chmod 755 your_app.sh
$ cp your_app.sh  your_app/

To install the program, just 'cp your_app/ /opt/'.  If the user runs 
/opt/your_app/your_app.sh, your program gets run.


*  You might want to make a GUI installer.  In that case:

$ cp   setup.rb  your_app/
$ cat >>setup.sh
#!/bin/sh

export RUBYLIB="./lib"
./ruby setup.rb
$
$ chmod 755 setup.sh
$ cp setup.sh your_app/


*  To make the final distribution, make a zip or tar.gz file and get the 
user to unzip the file and run setup.sh

*  You might want to use 'Makeself' to creat a self-extracting archive 
which will run your setup.sh file after it's been extracted.

http://www.megastep.org/makeself/

Hope that helps,
-- 
Daniel Carrera, Math PhD student at UMD.  PGP KeyID: 9AF77A88
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