On 2023-10-19 06:52:40 +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 10:43:25AM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote: > > CToID writes: > > > > > How do I distribute Guile programs to somebody who doesn't have Guile > > > installed on their system?  It does not seem like Guile compiler is > > > able to produce a standalone executable. > > > > The same way you distribute Java programs, python programs and perl > > programs. You ask they they install the langauge environment as part of > > your instructions > > And -- at the end of the day -- C programs: libc (or equivalent) and > the runtime aren't trivial either. Unless you are doing embedded stuff. > > In Linux, for example, a "C executable" (a binary compiled from C) > isn't that different from a shell script, if you squint. While in > a shell script you have that shebang line stating "I want to be > interpreted by /bin/foo", the executable says "I want to be loaded > by /lib/ld-linux.so" (the dynamic loader) or something similar. Most of the time you would do static binary with musl as a libc. That way (and utilizing static libraries) you can produce *very* portable native programs. There of course are limitations, but often it works quite well. > > Actually, AFAIK, the Guile compiler compiles down to dynamic objects > these days. But you need that pesky runtime... > > It's turtles all the way down :-) > > Cheers > -- > t -- There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.