[Openmcl-devel] Re: Standalone binaries

[Hamilton Link]

I still don't understand why you or anyone would be particularly 
concerned about distributing something as a single file; can you 
clarify why you need to do this?

I don't remember the last time I saw an application that was a single, 
self-contained file. (In any case, anything worth it's salt typically 
comes with image files, default config files, a README or other 
documentation, a license file, etc. etc. -- even for homework, the last 
time I did any that the professor expected to be able to run, I still 
had to include source code with the executable.)

anyway...

You do understand that "installing openmcl" is *not* required, right? 
Installing the application you wish to distribute *is* required 
(whatever installing means, to me under unix it typically means "unpack 
a tar file"), and at a minimum (for several lisp systems including 
OpenMCL) that means two files, the vendor's lisp kernel and your app's 
heap image.

If you really, really, *really* want to distribute a single-file 
program, you might see if you can find a lisp-to-C translator. There 
are a couple out there, but I don't know how good they are or whether 
they're even worth the trouble. If you go that route, Heaven help you.

My advice is learn to use tar and gzip -- everyone, everywhere, has the 
capacity to unpack such a file and look in the resulting directory for 
a README.

h

On Friday, April 18, 2003, at 11:42 AM, Taoufik Dachraoui wrote:

> I did not mean to run an executable on all different unix operating 
> systems. By 'all unix systems' I meant 'all machines running the same 
> unix operating system'. For example, the executable I create on my 
> machine (Mac OS X) can run on any other Mac OS X machine (even if they 
> do not have openmcl installed).
>
> Example, in C when you create an executable, you can take the 
> executable and run it on any other machine (with the same OS) at a 
> condition that all shared libraries used by the executable exists (eg. 
> X11).
>
> It is my fault, I was not clear in my statements. I hope that someone 
> understood my concerns.
>
> SAVE-APPLICATION creates an image file, then we need to run dppccl 
> with the image as an argument, so we cannot run the image in another 
> system that do not have openmcl installed.
>
> I may be not precise in my comments and I ask you to bear with me and 
> be patient, I am trying to learn as much as I can, and I find the mail 
> group very interesting.
>
> regards
> Taoufik
>
>
> On vendredi, avr 18, 2003, at 18:28 Africa/Tunis, Erann Gat wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, 18 Apr 2003, Taoufik Dachraoui wrote:
>>
>>> the JVM is allover the places, not openmcl.
>>
>> Sorry, can't help you there.  The world is the way it is.
>>
>>> For this reason I am looking for a way
>>> to create an executable where all needed stuff is in it (excluding
>>> functions in standard unix libraries and system calls), so that my 
>>> lisp
>>> applications can run on any unix system (I hope)!
>>
>> First, there is no way to create a binary executable (in any language)
>> that will "run on any unix system."  If you doubt this, try to take 
>> any
>> binary from one unix system (like Linux) and run it on a different 
>> unix
>> system (like Solaris).
>>
>> Second, Gary already told you how to create a standalone executable 
>> using
>> save-application.  You complained that it was too big, and I 
>> explained to
>> you why it had to be that big, and that the "fact" that apparently
>> self-contained C binaries appear small is really just an illusion.
>>
>> The only way to achieve what you seem to want is to make openmcl as
>> ubiquitous as the JVM.  That is a worthy goal, but very difficult to
>> achieve.  You are probably better off coming up with another plan.
>>
>> E.
>>
>
>
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>



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