Howto use rubyscript2exe to package some external application along with ruby

[Nuralanur]

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Dear all,

I would like to distribute a Ruby application that calls
an external application.
So far, I give the potential user the opportunity
to enter or change some Gnuplot code, which is
sent to Gnuplot via Open3 and produces some plot.
Now, I would like to avoid asking the user to make
sure he has Gnuplot installed.

1.) How can I ensure that everything that I need from Gnuplot
is included in my application ? Is this done automatically
by rubyscript2exe ?
2.) Can the Open3 syntax be used even if Gnuplot is not
installed on the system the new distributed file is run on -
will some file from the package created by rubyscript2exe
(question 1) be substituted for the missing installation of Gnuplot ?

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Axel



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[David Vallner]

D=C5=88a Nede=C4=BEa 12 Febru=C3=A1r 2006 23:53 (e-mail address removed) nap=C3=AD=
sal:

Dear all,

I would like to distribute a Ruby application that calls
an external application.
So far, I give the potential user the opportunity
to enter or change some Gnuplot code, which is
sent to Gnuplot via Open3 and produces some plot.
Now, I would like to avoid asking the user to make
sure he has Gnuplot installed.

1.) How can I ensure that everything that I need from Gnuplot
is included in my application ? Is this done automatically
by rubyscript2exe ?
2.) Can the Open3 syntax be used even if Gnuplot is not
installed on the system the new distributed file is run on -
will some file from the package created by rubyscript2exe
(question 1) be substituted for the missing installation of Gnuplot ?

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Axel

I have very, very strong doubts rubyscript2exe will detect and pack externa=
l=20
applications. My wild guess is rubyscript2exe sort of dumps the state of th=
e=20
interpreter at the end of the execution of your script, with all dependenci=
es=20
loaded in memory.

Since Gnuplot is an external application not residing in the memory space o=
f=20
the interpreter, you're probably stuck with making sure Gnuplot is installe=
d.=20
You could also make an installer for your application and distribute Gnuplo=
t=20
with it.

Disclaimer: I might be completely wrong.

David Vallner

 

[Alex Fenton]

I would like to distribute a Ruby application that calls
an external application.

1.) How can I ensure that everything that I need from Gnuplot
is included in my application ? Is this done automatically
by rubyscript2exe ?

No, it's not done automatically. You can tell rubyscript2exe to include an external executable in the package by setting the constant RUBYSCRIPT2EXE_BIN at "compile"
time

RUBYSCRIPT2EXE_BIN = [ 'myapp.exe' ]

When the "compiled" executable is run, PATH is altered so that the bundled executable will be available.

This works well for executables that are single self-contained files, as well as for
dlls (using RUBYSCRIPT2EXE_DLLS), but probably not so well for programs that expect lots of support files to be installed alongside.

hth
alex

 

[Erik Veenstra]

I would like to distribute a Ruby application that calls an

external application. So far, I give the potential user the
opportunity to enter or change some Gnuplot code, which is
sent to Gnuplot via Open3 and produces some plot. Now, I
would like to avoid asking the user to make sure he has
Gnuplot installed.

1.) How can I ensure that everything that I need from Gnuplot
is included in my application ? Is this done automatically by
rubyscript2exe ?

No, it's not.

But, according to the RubyScript2Exe documentation, you can do
this: Put everything you need (your application and other
applications) in one directory tree, build an RBA from this
directory with Tar2RubyScript [1] and "compile" this RBA with
RubyScript2Exe [2].

All steps, including the rationale of both projects, are
described in [3].

gegroet,
Erik V. - http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/

[1] http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/tar2rubyscript/index.html
[2] http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/index.html
[3] http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/index.html