From: jstern@... (Josh Stern)
Date: 2001-01-17T13:40:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9406] Re: 101 Misconceptions About Dynamic Languages

Dave Thomas  <Dave@PragmaticProgrammer.com> wrote:

>However... the reality is that we're also having to recode Ruby
>programs for other reasons. Deployment is one issue, client
>nervousness is another. 

Is this deployment issue and nervousness related to the desire
for inscrutable, binary, executables?  I know there was a disscussion
a while back about this but I didn't participate in that.
My thought though, was that the following would be a viable
and not so hard approach:

1) Use the Ruby interpreter as an embedded library
2) Create a script that will take a top level Ruby
routine, possibly with 'require' statements, and
convert all the code to one big file of sequential
statements.
3) gzip the file
4) create a C program that links in the gzipped file
as a big string and feeds it as input to the
interpreter using zlib.

I think zlib is more cross platform than Ruby, so
this should be a portable technique.


-= Josh