Packing your Ruby application into a single executable.
It takes less than 5 minutes to compile any project with Ruby Packer.
You won't need to modify a single line of code in your application, no matter how you developed it as long as it works in plain Ruby!
- Works on
Windows, 
macOS and 
Linux - Windows is supported via the native Windows API; there are no MSYS2/MinGW/Cygwin dependencies
- Creates a binary distribution of your Ruby and/or Rails application
- Supports natively any form of
requireandload, including dynamic ones (e.g.load(my_path + '/x.rb')) - Ruby Packer is written in Ruby and is packed and distributed using Ruby Packer itself
- Native C extensions are fully supported
- Open Source, MIT Licensed
- Some gems that use C extensions that use libc IO to load files from your Rails application will not work with rubyc. Notably, bootsnap will not work with rubyc
- On macOS and Linux, DTrace is currently disabled, see pmq20#114
Here is the latest stable Ruby Packer release:
Whenever the master branch CI succeeded, a Ruby Packer pre-release binary would be automatically generated. Here is the latest unstable pre-release build:
First install the prerequisites:
- Visual Studio, all editions including the Community edition (remember to select "Common Tools for Visual C++" feature during installation).
- SquashFS Tools: you might want to first install choco and then execute
choco install squashfs. - Ruby: you might want to install it using RubyInstaller.
- Perl: you might want to install it using Strawberry Perl for Windows.
- Netwide Assembler: please make sure
nasmworks from your command line.
Then download rubyc.exe from either Unstable Pre-release or Stable Releases.
Optionally, put it under C:\Windows or any other PATH directories.
Open Visual Studio's "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt" and execute rubyc --help therein.
First install the prerequisites:
- SquashFS Tools:
brew install squashfs - Xcode
- You also need to install the
Command Line Toolsvia Xcode. You can find this under the menuXcode -> Preferences -> Downloads - This step will install
gccand the related toolchain containingmake
- You also need to install the
- Ruby
Then download rubyc from either Unstable Pre-release or Stable Releases.
Run chmod +x to give it execution permissions and execute ./rubyc --help.
First install the prerequisites:
- SquashFS Tools
sudo yum install squashfs-toolssudo apt install squashfs-tools
gccorclang- GNU Make
- Ruby
Then download rubyc from either Unstable Pre-release or Stable Releases.
Run chmod +x to give it execution permissions and execute ./rubyc --help.
rubyc [OPTION]... [ENTRANCE_FILE]
ENTRANCE_FILE refers to the path of an executable ruby script from your project, e.g. "bin/rails".
If ENTRANCE_FILE was not provided, a single raw Ruby interpreter executable would be produced.
-r, --root=DIR The path to the root of your application
-o, --output=FILE The path of the output file
-d, --tmpdir=DIR The directory for temporary files
--keep-tmpdir Keeps all temporary files that were generated last time
--openssl-dir The path to openssl
--make-args=ARGS Extra arguments to be passed to make
--nmake-args=ARGS Extra arguments to be passed to nmake
-i, --ignore-file=STRING Ignore file(s) from build
--debug Enable debug mode
--quiet Enable quiet mode
-v, --version Prints the version of rubyc and exit
-V, --ruby-version Prints the version of the Ruby runtime and exit
--ruby-api-version Prints the version of the Ruby API and exit
-h, --help Prints this help and exit
rubyc compiles its own version of openssl without any certifications. To be able to use ssl with rubyc it should know where to find the certifications.
By default this path is set to /usr/local/etc/openssl/ but can be overridden using the --openssl-dir argument.
Keep in mind that users running your compiled package should have their certifications present in this directory as well.
If you don't want certain files included in the build you can ignore them from the command line using -i.
rubyc -i ignore.file -i ignore-2.file -i "ignore*"
Alternatively you can create a .rubycignore file in the root of your project to specify which files should be ignored.
I.e. packing the raw Ruby interpreter without packing any projects:
rubyc
./a.out (or a.exe on Windows)
Taking Ruby Packer itself as an example of the CLI utility to pack:
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/pmq20/ruby-packer
cd ruby-packer
rubyc bin/rubyc
./a.out (or a.exe on Windows)
rails new yours
cd yours
rubyc bin/rails
./a.out server (or a.exe server on Windows)
To build rubyc you must have a C compiler and the necessary toolchain to
build ruby and the libraries stuffed inside rubyc which include at least:
- gdbm
- libffi
- ncurses
- openssl
- readline
- yaml
- zlib
If you are unsure if your toolchain is complete then trying to build rubyc
will let you know you are missing something. Unfortunately it may tell you
with some unfamiliar message. Please file an issue here if this occurs.
Once your toolchain is set up run bundle. To compile your own rubyc run:
bundle exec rake rubyc
Or (if you want to compile with debug symbols):
ENCLOSE_IO_RUBYC_ADDTIONAL_ARGS=--debug bundle exec rake rubyc
This will produce a single rubyc executable, which can
be put inside any of your PATH locations, so that it can be directly
called from the command prompt. For example:
mv rubyc /usr/local/bin
Remember that rubyc includes all the files from the current directory in the built executable. You must delete the prior rubyc or your squashfs will continually grow larger and the embedded squashfs compile time will be very, very long.
- RubyConf 2017 (New Orleans, LA) presentation video: Packing your Ruby application into a single executable.
- Libsquash: portable, user-land SquashFS that can be easily linked and embedded within your application.
- Squashfs Tools: tools to create and extract Squashfs filesystems.