[ruby-talk:9953] Re: Miniturising libraries on linux

>> I have been thinking about how to go about putting ruby in a 
>> limited resource enviroment (a PDA)

>What a great idea. Can I ask which particular platform or machine you have
>in mind?

Well the agenda VR3 will be my test environment but should be useful on any linux PDA or older computer. But a lot of the more expensive PDAs wont need to use horrible compression hacks because the have quite a lot more resources (all though it might come in handy for people cramming in as much as possible.)

--- Different post ---

>To get a tar.gz file you tar, and then gzip.  What is
>being talked about here is gzip and then tar.  If you
>have many small similar files then taring and gzipping
>will give substantially better compression.  But if
>you gzip and then tar, then the outside world has a
>tar file and you can extract any individual file by
>itself.

--- AND ---

>2. Execution time. This is in "quadratic time". This means that if you
>have twice the files, you quadruple your time. This can be improved by
>switching to another format:
>
>	(a) usual file hierarchy but with support for .gz
>	(b) tar archive, not gzipped, but containing only .gz files
>	(c) .zip file

Right, of course, so now I am using gz.tar files (zip isn't on the VR3s default distrobution).


>3. Not using a temporary file. This would require a change to the
>built-in "require" method itself.

---AND---

>>  In "require" you can perhaps store the name of the file previously loaded,
>>  this to avoid to extract twice the same file.
>> 
>Okay, just look in $"

So I figure I can stick the dumping of the file to std out in backticks and have that passed to eval. But now I will have to keep track of all the previously required files myself or maybe can I add to $".

Thanks everyone for all your posts, they have been very useful.