CRATEPackaging Standalone Ruby Applications

Jeremy Hinegardner

jeremy@copiousfreetime.org @copiousfreetime

COPIOUS FREE TIME

Fedora Packaging

•beanstalkd•haproxy•libtomcrypt•libtommath•nginx•ragel•tinyproxy

Ruby Gems

•amalgalite•crate•keybox•launchy•heel•hitimes•htauth•rabal•stickler

Crate&

Amalgalite

SURVEY

PRE HISTORYRubyConf 2007 (Charlotte, NC)

• Sploitin’ with Ruby

• Aaron Bedra

• Deploying Ruby Runtimes

• Bruce Williams & Rich Kilmer

STORYTIME

PERL 4, 1993

NO CONTROL

• interpreters? - perl probably, python maybe, ruby most likely not

• what libraries? - openssl? zlib?

• compiler? - quite possibly not

What do you do, when only thing you know about your

deployment location, is the Operating System?

AND YOU LOVE RUBY.

YOU MAKE CRATE.

SO WHAT IS CRATE?

embedded Ruby

+ standard library+ main wrapper

+ application codeCrate based application

+ ruby extensions

RUBYSCRIPT2EXE ?

http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe

eee.exe trailereee.gz

application.exe

exe rubylib

dlls

Ruby

sitelib

Extension

gems

Application

MY NEEDS

• Minimally Invasive

• do not unpack to a temporary location

• small as can be

• Wide deployment capabilities

• more than linux, mac, windows, cygwin

CRuby

Statically Compile

Pack into Amalgalite

embedded Ruby

+ standard library+ main wrapper

+ application codeCrate based application

+ ruby extensions

1 CREATE TABLE rubylibs (2       id            INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,3       filename      TEXT UNIQUE,4       compressed    BOOLEAN,5       contents      BLOB6       );

Executable + C extensions

Ruby libs

Ruby 1.8.6

Crate/ruby 1.8.6

2.4 M 8.4 M

2.9 M 1.9 M

Inexact Size Measurements

 1 module Kernel 2   # alias the original require away to use later 3   alias :amalgalite_original_require :require 4  5   # 6   # hook into the system 'require' to allow for required text or blobs from an 7   # amalgalite database.   8   # 9   def require( filename )10     loaded = amalgalite_original_require( filename )11   rescue LoadError => load_error12     if load_error.message =~ /#{Regexp.escape filename}\z/ then13       loaded = Amalgalite::Requires.require( filename )14     else15       raise load_error16     end17   end18 19   private :require20   private :amalgalite_original_require21 end

Amalgalite ruby driver is bootstrapped in its C extension

DEMO

BOOTSTRAPPING

ISSUE #1 - AUTOLOAD

• Problem

• bypasses the require chain setup by amalgalite

• used by rack, active_support, active_record

• Solution

• Port tree style patches?

• custom gem builds?

ISSUE #2 - VIEWS IN WEB FRAMEWORKS

• Problem

• layout and templates loaded from disk

• Solution

• wait for Rails 3

• sinatra, others, make patches for upstream, if needed.

ISSUE #3 - CLASS RELOADING

• Problem

• Development mode reloads classes

• Solution ( for now )

• production mode when running as crate based apps

ISSUE #4 - NOT WINDOWS FRIENDLY ( YET )

QUESTIONS?