I'd like to be able to send a Ruby app to some colleagues without requiring them to install a Ruby interpreter. A single exe would be preferable.
I googled and found "RubyScript2Exe".
What are your experiences with that? Are there other such tools or are there better approaches altogether than building an exe?
I've used it about 3 times and I haven't had any problems with it and I ran one of the apps on 10 servers and never had any issues. So, I think RubyScript2Exe is about as good as it gets for ruby.
_why's Shoes framework lets you package the program as an executable for Mac or Windows that installs Shoes (contains a Ruby interpreter). Information about using the packager is here. _why also gives hints about how he makes the Windows executable here.
Don't forget OCRA [1] which I used a couple of times and which Just Worked.
I used to create my exes with RubyScript2Exe as mentioned above but had problems when used with Ruby 1.9 [2].
[1] http://ocra.rubyforge.org/
[2] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/343891
There is another one called Crate. You can find some information about it here. However I haven't tested it on Windows.
Sorry to be late to the party, but I found this question in my search for trying to do this myself (starting to use SO more and more as a primary resource).
Anyway, I have just had success with exerb, although I'd add a couple of notes:
The web page says exerb runs on any platform. That is true; however if you "compile" a program calls out to native code, then exerb will embed your system's native code (e.g. Linux .so files) into the .exe. In practice, that means you have to build any significant app on Windows.
The web page also says ruby -r exerb/mkrbc but the actual command is ruby -r exerb/mkexy.
Related
I enjoy developing in Haskell, but am presently confronted with a challenge. At my place of education, I don't have administrative rights on my account. I want to debug/test while there. I need a way to run Haskell code without installing haskell-platform or ghci or anything else requiring of an administrative level of privilege. For instance, a web site which will run haskell code (abeit limited to not include file access of course) or a java utility (or standalone .app, though java is preferred due to the nature of the "parental controls"), or something else I haven't thought of. Source or compiled Java, Flash, and source code in Ruby or Python are preferred to native code. This is on Mac OS X 10.6, for reference.
You can install GHC without admin privileges, but you'll have to build from source. Check out the Building on MacOS X for more details.
Essentially, like any other open-source project, you can compile code and install it, generally, anywhere on your filesystem like into a folder in your home folder (I often use the ~/.local folder for that purpose).
As the linked page mentions, you can also use MacPorts and install it to any place you can write to. Once MacPorts is installed you can install GHC.
EDIT
As pointed out by Carl in the comments below, you don't need to build from source. Just grab the binary tarball from http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_4_1#binaries.
In addition to all the other ideas, several companies will rent you virtual (cloud) linux servers for a few cents an hour. You have root on those and can install whatever you want, then freeze the image until you need it again.
Normally this might not be advantageous over a local solution if you can make one work, but a possible extra benefit would be that your work can stay on a single "computer" which you could access while sitting in front of any variety of modern PC that might be available to you on a given day.
An alternative not only for Haskell is http://ideone.com/
For the website option, TryHaskell will hardly cut it, it's way to limited.
codepad, OTOH, is more liberal, and should be of more use.
But honestly the bindist option is the best one, clearly!
If you truly can't install anything, then there's
http://tryhaskell.org/ -- like GHCi, but you can't load modules, which means not only that you can't use many standard functions (say, the functions in Data.List), but also that you can't use certain language features (like user-defined algebraic data types).
I also remember a hpaste-style site which executes its code -- and allows you to have private pastes -- but I can't remember it at the moment. Edit: I was thinking of http://codepad.org/ -- thanks #Mog
Try http://hiji.tinyrocket.se/ It is a haskell interpreter written using javascript.
http://ghc.io/ GHC.IO is a version of the Haskell interactive interpreter, ghci, that runs online in a web browser.
You just need to install homebrew, which you can do without root rights if you do so in your home directory. You can then brew install cabal-install
which will automatically install cabal and ghc, or brew install stack to install stack.
There is a web-based interpreter for Haskell at http://tryhaskell.org/. However, it may not provide enough functionality for your requirements.
I have downloaded spotify API and am trying to build the example code using libspotify on Windows. The build environment seems to apply only for Mac/Linux world (atleast the Makefile seems to suggest that and there are no Visual Studio project files). Any one has any luck in building the sample code on Windows ?
Even the basic stub example uses pthreads which is not available on windows. Since all their examples assume a POSIX compliant OS (which windows is not) I'm afraid you will not be able to build them on windows (natively). If you want try then take a look at Cygwin.
However, you can still use the include header file and the provided dll/lib to link against and develop applications. The library calls made in the examples are still valid - just not the examples themselves.
I wrote a program in Perl, and now I want to send it to buddy. I don't want him having any kind of bother with launching it.
How do I make some package which he can just click and have all things ready to launch?
PS. I can ask him to download ActivePerl and install it beforehand.
PPS. I don't need to hide .pl sources from him. I need though automatic download and install of all required CPAN modules.
Also, what if in future I will need to scale it for production delivery? Meaning, it will be not a buddy on the receiving side, but Mr. Client?
I have used pp with great success. It can package a Perl interpreter and used modules all together into an executable file.
Then again there is always B::C which provides a perlcc utility, but I haven't had as much luck with that.
For easy distribution to windows clients, its hard to beat PerlApp, Par::Packer (aka pp), or Cava Packager.
Although I like Joel's suggestion best I'd want to point out another solution for you. As it seems you're targeting Windows you could also use the portable version of Strawberry Perl. Install the modules you need, add your script/application to it, setup a simple batch script to launch it with the portable environment and you're set.
The biggest downside compared to the pp (PAR::Packer) solution is that the size of your application will be rather big as pp only includes that what is necessary.
You might be looking for IndigoStar's perl2exe:
Perl2Exe is a command line program for converting Perl scripts to executable files. This allows you to create stand alone programs in Perl that do not require the Perl interpreter. You can ship the executable files without having to ship your Perl source code. Perl2Exe can generate executables for Windows and Unix target hosts.
Of course, the easiest way would be if your clients could run perl.
Yoy may wish to try Cava Packager. It can produce executables from Perl code on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It takes an alternative approach to PerlApp, pp and perl2exe. You should probably try them all and decide which you like best.
Note: As indicated by my name, I am affiliated with Cava Packager.
Par::Packer will do the job for you, without any fuss and is completely free. As long as you have installed the correct dependencies, you simply (on a windows machine) open a command prompt, CD into the directory where your perl source (e.g. 'samplefile.pl') resides and type: pp -o sampleprogram.exe samplefile.pl. After a minute or so, 'samplefile.exe' is compiled, and you can send it to your friend to run
Perl2Exe is a proprietary solution, and although it is good, is not free
Good luck!
It seems to be very counter productive in that so many gems will break on windows. I have been dealing with so many mysql and ruby-mysql gem problems (seg faults occuring in the gem itself, a class called UnixSocket apparently doesn't work well on windows machines, etc etc).
I'm I just wasting my time here? Should I move onto a different scripting language?
I have very little experience with Ruby on Windows but when I was starting with Ruby I was on Windows and I got the general impression that it wasn't a Windows-native system.
So after many years of using primarily Windows, getting into Ruby prompted me to switch back to my original system, Unix, this time to Linux. Ruby did run with less hassle and running bash in its native environment was better than the just-mostly-OK Cygwin. I was happy.
Then my new employer had me switch to the Mac. Now I'm really spoiled, but really happy.
I realize this is subjective but ISTM that Linux was a lot better than windows and the Mac is a lot better than Linux. I could still run Windows in VMWare Fusion if I wanted to, but I don't. I do have some Linux VM's.
I think what I'm really trying to say is that there is a reason Ruby isn't best deployed on Windows. The kind of people who run Ruby are .. I'm trying to think of a non-pejorative word here .. not likely to be found on Windows.
So this is a turning point for you. Yes, .net is a sophisticated and well-documented environment, yes, windows has been reliable for several years now, and yes, it's a respectable system at this point. Yes, it runs Stack Overflow and some of the gurus are Windows guys. But it's just kind of a litmus test for .. darn, missing that word again ..
A lot of people run Windows because they just don't know what else to run. Linux is a good alternative if you have to buy the system yourself. And if you or your employer can afford it, the (Unix-underneath) Mac gives you everything Linux does plus the Mac-specific world.
It's time to choose... :-)
I've been developing with Ruby on Windows for several years, including building and deploying "enterprise" intranet Rails apps running against Oracle, MySQL and SQLServer on both Windows and Solaris servers.
Agreed, there are a few gems that have compiled components whose authors have not built Windows versions - that's OK, it's an open-source platform and they don't have to if they don't want to. Similarly, you're perfectly entitled to (a) ignore libraries that don't have mswin32 or mingw32 versions or (b) give something back by compiling them yourself!
As for the MySQL gem, IIRC on Windows you need the "pure Ruby" adaptor, which does not use the MySQL C API: http://github.com/tmtm/ruby-mysql or gem install ruby-mysql
I don't think you're wasting your time. I've worked with two guys who've done extensive projects on Ruby on Rails apps using Windows XP, like major, long-term projects. They seem to not mind it at all. They both worked on it using the NetBeans IDE. (It has a Ruby-specific version.)
I tried it myself when I first got started with Ruby and didn't run into a lot of errors or problems with gems, though there were some things that worked awkwardly. Usually there was a workaround.
I decided that I greatly preferred using OS X or CentOS Linux for Ruby development. But I know for a fact that working on Windows is possible.
One thing to look out for is that 90% of the Ruby community is on OS X and deploys to Linux, so you'll get more help if you're on one of those OSs.
Another thing to look out for is that the whole Ruby universe and culture is very oriented towards the Unix command line using the bash shell. All your tutorials and stuff are going to kind of assume that. They're going to have instructions like "Go to the shell and run # rake db:migrate and it will be a lot easier to follow those instructions if you have a full-featured shell with command completion, command history, etc. So if you want to work on Windows you might look into installing something like MinGW.
I'd like to do some light data processing - a little binary data manipulation followed by conversion to text serialization. The result is written to a file, and processed by an external program (run by my program). The data processing is more than I'd care to consider doing in batch files.
I'd prefer to use a scripting language, but not have to install the language first. The target computers are mostly older Windows boxes, which are disconnected from the network (no updates, such as PowerShell)
I'm not familiar with the various language's tools for creating EXE files. Which ones have solutions that work well and don't produce huge files? (i.e., whole interpreter package plus my script.)
For my money (its free) AutoIt 3 is exactly what your looking for. AutoIt produces relatively (250k is the standard overhead) small stand alone exes. It has a full perl like regex engine so your light data processing should be a breeze (I've written some pretty heavy data processing scripts in it myself). When downloading autoit be sure to get the full version including Scite this makes compile to exe a one click operation.
I know I might get flamed for this, but VB 6 is a viable option. Since XP SP2 (I think, possibly earlier), Windows has come with its runtimes installed. Not sure about vista.
Theres also the Windows Scripting Host that uses VBScript and JScript.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host
Lua is an excellent choice for that kind of stuff. You can integrate it in your executable or use the standalone Lua interpreter to run your scripts.
While waiting for answers I ran across Shoes, which can make Ruby .exe (I'm most familiar with Ruby) I got it mostly working, although the size of 2.4MB was a bit larger than I'd like. However, I found that it would crash when changing application focus.
I switched to a 'regular' terminal script, and found rubyscript2exe, which, after working around a problem with rubygems, seems to work, and creates a ~700kb file.
I did rather like some of the options presented, but it's not worth redeveloping at this point.
Python with py2exe. Depends on what you mean by small though.
Would using PowerShell script be something you've considered. The data processing might be richer there.
Why not knock up a .NET application? There are free editions of the IDE, and the Framework comes with Windows as a standard component (which also includes a C# compiler, as it happens.)