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by ris 1874 days ago
Nix can do this for basically anything - even python scripts with all their dependency modules, binary extensions and all dynamic lib dependencies, packed up into a single .nar file.

nix-shell can even be used as a shebang-line for scripts: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/#use-as-a-interpreter
2 comments
PaulDavisThe1st 1874 days ago
On the other hand, Nix is also the only Linux distribution to have broken ("changed") the LD_LIBRARY_PATH behavior of the runtime linker, which means 3rd party "self-contained" packages can't work there, even though they do on every other Linux distro.

So there's that.

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tadfisher 1874 days ago
The NixOS solution to that is `buildFHSUserEnv` (soon to use bubblewrap under the hood) but obviously that's not ideal.

`nix bundle` (coming with the upcoming flakes feature) promises to make Nix-built binaries runnable without nix, for the opposite of what you want.

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jart 1874 days ago
How useful is that though, for liberating and expropriating binaries? That things got to be at least several megabytes. If I used that as an interpreter or shell script prefix hack then I'd feel like an ant riding on the JVM's coattails.

That's one of the reasons I wrote APE. The bootloader shell script prefix is only 12kb so you can write a small program and it'll feel like it's actually your program. When you distribute it to your friends (respecting their time not asking them to become build system experts, just to try the cool thing you've written) you'll find that APE lets it run on seven operating systems too and most importantly, it'll just feel like something you've written, and that is yours, rather than, "hey grandma install oracle java first, here's how to remove the toolbar" kind of things where you're just evangelizing someone else's platform.

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