I would like to compile irb from source without any optimizations so I can get more information while stepping through (interpreter) code using gdb. I have successfully compiled ruby 1.9.1 without problems, but I cannot find any documentation regarding irb. I believe that irb is included in the ruby 1.9 source, but have not been able to verify this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Can you clarify what you mean exactly by "compiling IRb without optimizations"?
You don't say which implementation of Ruby you are using. I am going to assume you are using YARV.
With, YARV, there is no separate compile step, it compiles IRb automatically for you, everytime you run it. (Even though YARV is a compiler, you can think of it as an interpreter, since you never have to worry about the compilation step.) Also, YARV doesn't do any optimizations when compiling AFAIK, and if it does, there is no way to influence the compilation, thus also no way to turn optimizations off.
IRb is quite easy to find in the YARV sourcecode. The executable lives in the bin directory:
bin/irb
But it's not doing any interesting work. The real meat is in the standard library:
lib/irb.rb and
the whole lib/irb/ directory
Related
Related:
How to compile srlua?
How do I Make an executable Lua script using srlua?
The first link is the exact question I am asking here. However, the sole answer is unsatisfactory as it assumes multiple things, namely that the OP is already using Cmake (a fact disproved by the OP's comment on the answer). The second link seems to already be most of the way through a tutorial, and while a link to precompiled binaries for both srlua.exe and srglue.exe are provided, the link no longer contains binaries but instead the source.
I have found several other threads on various websites all asking the same thing, but all of them either assume that you essentially already know how, or explain nothing (many have potentially helpful links, but they are old and no longer work).
I have already tried to compile srlua, and got a srglue.exe, but when I tried srlua.c I ended up with a list of undefined references (such as "lua_type" or "lua_getfield").
lua_getfield, lua_type, lua_settop, lua_getfield, lua_type, lua_settop, lua_pushstring, lua_pushinteger, lua_call, lua_pushfstring, lua_load, lua_tolstring, lua_tointeger, lua_touserdata, luaL_openlibs, lua_createtable, lua_pushstring, lua_rawseti, lua_setfield, luaL_checkstack, lua_pushstring, lua_call, lua_tolstring, luaL_callmeta, lua_type, lua_type, lua_typename, lua_pushfstring, luaL_newstate, lua_pushcclosure, lua_pushcclosure, lua_pushinteger, lua_pushlightuserdata, lua_pcall, lua_tolstring, lua_close
My question is this:
How does one use a C compiler (I know the basics of gcc) to compile srlua specifically? Or, if anyone has a functioning link to either precompiled binaries or a tool to compile the binaries, could they share it?
Important: I am on Windows. Thus, I cannot just use make. I must actually compile the .c files to .exe files. I am asking how. If you simply provide links to threads with the aforementioned problems, you are not helping. If you give an answer that assumes in-depth prior knowledge of a particular tool that does not have good documentation, you are not being helpful. If you tell me tools to use, but not the specific procedure for compiling srlua, you are not being helpful. If there is a better place for this, tell me and I can move it there.
I don't know any Windows pre-compiled binaries for srLua.
To compile srLua, you should first install the Mingw compiler to use GCC as a C compiler : you can install TDM-GCC (https://jmeubank.github.io/tdm-gcc) or http://winlibs.com.
You can then open a Console prompt. Enter the "gcc" command to be sure that the compiler is working (and that the PATH is correctly set).
Then go to the directory you extracted the srLua source files and type the command :
mingw32-make
Cross your fingers and it should compile everything :)
When linking, you should include the Lua libraries with the -l Switch : -llua54 for Lua 5.4 library for examples.
I found this already compiled release on webarchive, it's kinda old but works:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130721014948/http://www.soongsoft.com/lhf/lua/5.1/srlua.tgz
Using Java big IDEs compile my code while it is written so that errors are detected before runtime.
Is that possible with Ruby too? Actually I code in a Text editor. Errors are detetected at runtime only.
Is that possible with Ruby too?
If by that you mean "compiling", then no. If you mean "edit-time error detection", then also no.
Smart IDEs, like RubyMine, can guess/detect some errors, but only simple cases. And they are often confused by ruby's dynamic nature. (can't find location for a method, even though it's defined within the project. Or the opposite, find too many false positives).
In ruby, you simply can't know what does a piece of code do without running it.
I feel that a native extension is like libraries that you should install onto your system before trying to install those gems, which depend on the native extensions. Like the ImageMagic library. Is that correct? Is there something else that we should know about native extensions?
A gem native extension might link to a separate library that needs to be pre-installed, and RMagick is an example of that.
However, the term really just means "includes some code that needs to be compiled for your machine". The code is compiled and linked so that the resulting executable file can be required by Ruby on the machine.
The usual reasons for writing a Ruby C or C++ extension are:
Speed. For some CPU-intense tasks, C code can be 100 times faster than Ruby. In this case a native extension can be completely stand-alone with all C source code included in the gem.
Third-party library already written in C. In this case the gem will have C source code that binds the library functions into Ruby modules, classes and methods.
You can view the C source code for gems with native extensions, it is installed alongside the Ruby source code. By convention, there is a folder inside the gem called ext/gem_name which contains a Ruby file extconf.rb that passes information to the compiler (technically it creates a make file). In addition the C source files are put there as well.
MRI Ruby is implemented as a very "flat" structure in C, basically consisting of a large number of C functions. This makes it relatively easy to learn how to implement a native extension, even if you don't know much C. You can read Extending Ruby 1.9 as an introduction to the topic.
Native extensions can fail to install or work properly. There are many questions on Stack Overflow asking for help with specific failed installs. The usual problems are:
Missing libraries. Hopefully the gem author will explain what you need to pre-install in the README, but is not always clear.
Compiler mismatches. It is difficult to test all target systems, so sometimes the instructions in extconf.rb won't work on a specific system, or the C code will raise warnings or not compile due to differences. In Windows, you probably won't have a working compiler unless you install the Ruby Devkit
Will not work with all versions of Ruby. For instance, JRuby can use C native extensions, if it has been enabled but it is not always advisable - the topic is quite complex, but generally avoid mixing JRuby and native extensions.
Native extension is just a gem which is written (entirely or partially) in C.
It may or may not depend on an external library, this is not a factor here. What matters is that such gem needs to be compiled and it is likely to be platform-dependant (there was a reason to use C, right? Maybe for using some low-level OS API or something. But most often it's to interface with a library).
Quoting this article
“Native extensions” are the glue that connects a Ruby gem with some other non-Ruby software component or library present on your machine.
The native extensionis not the dependency. A native extension is generally a C code that interacts with a non-Ruby dependency.
For instance, a gem that uses ImageMagic have a native extension written in C that talks to ImageMagic and represents the bridge from the Ruby gem to ImageMagic.
When you install the gem and the native extension is compiled, you don't compile the C library (e.g ImageMagic), that library must be already present on your system. You compile the C bridge bundled with the gem.
I'm not big ruby specialist, so take this with a grain of salt:
I'm fairly certain that it's just a gem that needs to install a native (e.g. C-Library) library in order to work. A lot of gems simply wrap existing C-libraries with a Ruby API.
The installation of the gem will trigger the download of C-libraries, which will then be built using gcc or another compiler. If your system configuration is not supported, you'll need to pass parameters to gem tool to indicate the right directories, etc.. if you're unlucky you might need to change the make files directly.
I'm writing a Go program that uses the GNU readline library for a fancy command line interface. In order to simplify the installing process and not worry about the library version and other stuff, I want to link it statically.
The problem is I don't really know how to do it. If I precompile the library, I would have to provide several versions of my code, with the different versions of the .a or .lib readline library. To avoid this problem I was thinking of just including the current readline code to my go project, and let the go tool compile it when it build the go project. However, to build the readline library, is necessary to use make. Is there a way of telling the go tool how to build the C code?
Yes, you can certainly do that. I've recently done something similar with a different project, mainly because the code was not available as a library (Ubuntu compiles just the command line tool for it). To achieve it, I've run the autoconf script with options that I figured would be sensible in most systems, and copied the C code together with the automatically built config.h header file into the Go package directory. Then, I've built the original C code with make once and observed which options gcc would get while compiling and linking it, and copied the appropriate ones into cgo's LDFLAGS and CFLAGS options (you can also inspect the Makefile, but that was easier).
A couple of side notes:
Have you considered doing the readline work in Go itself? The ssh terminal package works at least as a pretty good seed, if it doesn't solve your problem completely.
Remember that readline, although being a library, is GPL. You'll necessarily have to license your own software as GPL as well if you link or embed it. There are other smilar libraries available with less strict licenses, if you care.
I recommend avoiding readline, better alternatives exist; like https://github.com/edsrzf/fineline
In Java when you compile a .java file which defines a class, it creates a .class file. If you provide these class files to your coworkers then they cannot modify your source. You can also bundle all of these class files into a jar file to package it up more neatly and distribute it as a single library.
Does Ruby have any features like these when you want to share your functionality with your coworkers but you don't want them to be able to modify the source (unless they ask you for the actual .rb source file and tell you that they want to change it)?
I believe the feature you are looking for is called "trust" (and a source code control repository). Ruby isn't compiled in the same way that Java is, so no you can't do this.
I have to say your are in a rough position, not wanting to share code with a coworker. However, given that this is an unassailable constraint perhaps you could change the nature of the problem.
If you have a coworker that needs access to some service provided by a library of yours, perhaps you could expose it by providing a web/rest service instead of as a .rb file.
This way you can hide your code behind a web server, and if there is a network architecture that allows for low latency making these service calls, you can effectively achive the same goal.
Trust is a lot easier though.
edit:
Just saw this on HN: http://blog.astrails.com/2009/5/12/ruby-http-require, allows a ruby file to include another file through http instead of the filesystem.
Ruby is
A dynamic, interpreted, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.
So like all interpreted languages, you need to give the source code to anyone who want's to execute your program/script.
By the way searching "compiled ruby" on google returned quiet a few results.
I don't think there is one. Ruby is purely an interpreted language, which means ruby interprets your source code directly in order to run it. Java is compiled, so there's an intermediate bytecode (the .class). You can obfuscate your ruby if you really wish, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth.
Just to make sure you realize, however, upwards of 95% of Java can be decompiled back into source using various free utilities, so in reality, Java's compilation isn't much better than distributing Ruby source.
This is not a language specific problem and one that can be managed more effectively through source control software.
There is a library called ruby2c that compiles a subset of Ruby into C code (which you can then compile into native code, if you want).
It was actually originally written as a Ruby code obfuscator (but has since been used for lots of other stuff, including Ruby Arduino development).