Exerb

Packaged ruby source files and required other (*.rb *.so *.dll) to a .exe file.

Installation

0. Check your Ruby installation

   • Make sure you have rake; otherwise, run gem install rake
     • For Ruby < 1.9, you need a lower version rake that is compatible by specifying -v 10.5.0 (highest version compatible with Ruby 1.8.7)
   • For the current version, it requires that your Ruby installation should have a static runtime library before this gem's installation.
     • Note: For Ruby >= 2.4 installed by RubyInstaller, it does NOT come with a static Ruby library. To be sure:
     • Go to the folder <Your_Ruby_Path>/lib, and check if there exists the required file which has a name like lib<Platform>-ruby<Version_Number>-static.a. Especially note the word static in the filename; the file named lib<Platform>-ruby<Version_Number>-dll.a is for dynamic linking and therefore NOT useful.
     • If this is not the case, you can
       • Compile a static Ruby library on your own. If I have time, I may work on adding some guidance in this project in the future.
       • Visit RubyInstaller's archived versions here (Note: Not "RubyInstaller2" where they dropped the static library distribution) or a clearer list here (but you need to limit to those with version prior to 2.4)

1. Install RubyInstaller's DevKit

   • Below summarizes the whole process. For more information, please refer to RubyInstaller's wiki page.

   • Download the latest 32-bit (for 32-bit Ruby) or 64-bit (for 64-bit Ruby) Devkit here

     • Note: This is the 'legacy' MSYS devkit (not the MSYS2 one in the RubyInstaller2 repo)

   • Extract and cd to that folder

   • Run the following commands:

     devkitvars.bat	REM :Load mingw install path
     ruby dk.rb init
     notepad config.yml	REM :Review the config file and check if it has the correct ruby installed path; if not, edit it accordingly
     ruby dk.rb install
     ruby -e "require 'devkit'; puts ENV['RI_DEVKIT']"	REM :Test, ensure the path is %DEVKITPATH%  

     Note: For 64-bit Ruby, it is likely that dk init won't find the Ruby path successfully. In such a case, manually add a line in config.yml: e.g., - C:/Ruby23-x64

2. Install gem from local

   git clone https://github.com/Z-H-Sun/exerb-mingw.git
   cd exerb-mingw
   gem build exerb.gemspec
   gem install exerb --local --verbose

   • You can pass environment variables to configure the name of C compiler and compilation flags:

     Ex:

     • set EXERB_C_COMPILER=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe
     • set EXERB_GENERAL_CFLAGS=-std=gnu99 -Os -w
     • set EXERB_EXCLUDE_MANIFEST=1 (otherwise, a manifest with XP style, UAC, and DPI configurations will be attatched)
     • then after everything has been completed, set <every_env_var>= to unset their values

   • If you don't have git, it is also OK to download the current snapshot here and extract from the archive instead

   • If you just want to compile the C codes into binaries only without (re-)installing, instead of gem install ..., go to the gem installation path (C:\Ruby*\lib\ruby\gems\*\gems\exerb*) and run rake generate. This is useful when you have already installed the gem (i.e., the Ruby scripts, exerb and mkexy and those in the lib folder, have been copied to the Ruby path), and you, as a developer, want to change the C codes and update the binaries data/exerb/*.{exc,dll}

Updates and Known Bugs

• Recover compatibility with Ruby 1.8

• Allow configuring the compilation using environment variables

• Improve GUI for the error dialog

• Solve the encoding issue for non-English locale

  Caveats

  • In the generated exy file, if you find an enc/*.so file but without its corresponding enc/trans/*.so, please manually add the latter to the exy import file list; otherwise, it will not be able to be transcoded to other encodings. (I have taken care of all pairs with the same basenames (e.g., the Chinese ones), but some encoding libraries are not that straightforward (e.g., the Japanese ones).)
  • The system locale encoding libraries, along with UTF-8 / UTF-16 / ASCII-8BIT, have been imported properly and will work fine. However, if you want to transcode from / into other encodings, please manually include the corresponding enc/*.so and enc/trans/*.so libraries into the exy import file list.
  • Currently, the default 'external' encoding is set to be the same as 'locale' encoding, but it can be different from the script-defined encoding (defined on the first line or the line after shebang). The script-defined encoding will take effect when you create any new string object, but file reading/writing will still be in the 'locale' encoding. An easy workaround is to add an additional line at the beginning of your Ruby script: Encoding.default_external = __ENCODING__

• Now compatible with 64-bit Ruby. However, the generated 64-bit executables cannot dynamically load libraries (e.g., Win32API.new(...)), which will cause Segmentation Fault. There are likely more differences between 32-bit and 64-bit images that need further attention. I'm happy to announce that the segfault issue is also resolved!

• The RT (run-time) cores won't work for Ruby >= 1.9; don't use them (This is because Rakefile fails to map correct exports of the exerb runtime DLL; in the future, dumpbin might be worth trying although it is proprietary?)

• Not yet tested with Ruby >= 2.4. (RubyInstaller stopped providing the static library; I have not yet tried compiling it manually)

• Summary of undocumented features since Exerb 5.4

  • -c option will compress the codes
  • type: compiled-script in .exy file will compile and squentialize the Ruby code file (only works for Ruby >= 1.9)
  • ...

Usage

1. generate one or more ruby source files do some thing and test it

   ruby r1.rb arg1 arg2 arg3

2. make exy file from ruby source file

   mkexy -- r1.rb arg1 arg2 arg3 # or
   ruby -r exerb/mkexy r1.rb arg1 arg2 arg3

3. check r1.exy file, check every required files.
   can be change general.core to cui/gui, add resource , path section
   more demo old_*.exy in example/ and test/ directory

4. generate exe file

   exerb -v r1.exy

5. execute EXE file

   r1.exe arg1 arg2 arg3 # can receive some result as ruby r1.rb arg1 arg2 arg3

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/Z-H-Sun/exerb-mingw/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

License

Copyright (C) 2023 Z-H-Sun

Copyright (C) 2014 windwiny

Copyright (C) 2001-2006 加藤勇也

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the LICENSE file for more details.

The file vendor/mkexports.rb is copied from the source code repository of Ruby, which is copyrighted free software developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto, licensed by the 2-clause BSD License.

The binary form of this library may contain code from zlib (Copyright (C) 1995-2023 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler).