[ANN] RunBinary.jl: easily run binaries from YggDrasil

Package Announcements
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Thanks to BinaryBuilder, some programs are now much easier to install as Julia *_jll packages compared to other solutions. However, simple no-setup ways to run these programs were not available yet to my knowledge.

This is where RunBinary.jl (registered) comes to help. Its API consists of a single macro @run that installs the required jll package in a temporary environment and executes the specified binary:

@run SQLCipher.sqlcipher

A common usecase is to run via CLI:

$ julia -e 'using RunBinary; @run ImageMagick.identify `/path/to/file.jpg`'

For more details and options, see README.

The overhead is just about 2 seconds on my laptop:

$ time julia -e 'using RunBinary; @run HelloWorldC'
...
Hello, World!
2.20s user 0.86s system 144% cpu 2.116 total

This includes starting julia, creating a new temporary env, instantiating it, and running the target program. It further improves fourfold to 0.5 seconds with --compile=min.

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There’s also ygg (see also Announcing ygg), maybe there’s some synergy potential here?

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Indeed, @ericphanson pointed me to ygg in slack when I asked about it.
As I understand, ygg’s approach is aimed at a somewhat different case of using jll binaries: set up all required programs beforehand, add paths to $PATH, etc.
RunBinary is the alternative for running these programs in a more ad-hoc way with no additional setup needed (only julia + ]add RunBinary), and everything is garbage-collected by Pkg when not in use.
But I agree, in principle there may be some overlap…

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Thanks, @ericphanson !

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RunBinary.jl happened to be one of those rare packages that don’t need any maintenance for years :slight_smile: It’s one of my first Julia packages and has been working reliably since creation. It also remains compatible with all Julia versions since 1.6.

Julia + BinaryBuilder still is one of the easiest ways to install various software (assuming you have Julia installed already). And RunBinary.jl is a simple frontend to make ad-hoc install & run workflows maximally convenient.

There’s just one real update since 2021, in version 0.1.1 that should be registered momentarily:
Recently, I learned that one can silence Pkg operations by passing io=devnull. This allowed me to make RunBinary.jl usage even cleaner, now there’s no extra output at all – only what the underlying binary prints:

❯ julia -e 'using RunBinary; @run SQLite `-version`'
3.47.2 2024-12-07 20:39:59 2aabe05e2e8cae4847a802ee2daddc1d7413d8fc560254d93ee3e72c14685b6c (64-bit)

Pass verbose=true for the old (very verbose) behavior in case you need it for debugging:

❯ julia -e 'using RunBinary; @run SQLite `-version` verbose=true'
  Activating new project at `/var/folders/2j/9vtd991d201dbkh9dnx3wvy00000gq/T/jl_v6ZX81`
   Resolving package versions...
    Updating `/private/var/folders/2j/9vtd991d201dbkh9dnx3wvy00000gq/T/jl_v6ZX81/Project.toml`
  [76ed43ae] + SQLite_jll v3.47.2+2
    Updating `/private/var/folders/2j/9vtd991d201dbkh9dnx3wvy00000gq/T/jl_v6ZX81/Manifest.toml`
  [692b3bcd] + JLLWrappers v1.7.0
  [21216c6a] + Preferences v1.4.3
  [76ed43ae] + SQLite_jll v3.47.2+2
  [56f22d72] + Artifacts v1.11.0
  [ade2ca70] + Dates v1.11.0
  [8f399da3] + Libdl v1.11.0
  [de0858da] + Printf v1.11.0
  [fa267f1f] + TOML v1.0.3
  [4ec0a83e] + Unicode v1.11.0
  [83775a58] + Zlib_jll v1.2.13+1
3.47.2 2024-12-07 20:39:59 2aabe05e2e8cae4847a802ee2daddc1d7413d8fc560254d93ee3e72c14685b6c (64-bit)
  Activating project at `~/.julia/environments/v1.11`

The only other thing I wish RunBinary.jl had is an easier way to run it. Something like julia -m RunBinary SQLite file.db?.. This may become possible in the next Julia version.

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RunBinary.jl is now a Julia App

The most recent Julia version (1.12) supports so-called “apps”, and now RunBinary.jl can utilize this!

Run:

import Pkg; Pkg.Apps.add("RunBinary")

in Julia 1.12 to install the app, which then should become available from your terminal as:

runbinary ImageMagick.convert input.png output.jpg
runbinary SQLCipher database.db
runbinary difmap
...

for any binary available as a jll (mostly, from the Yggdrasil repo).

One time setup – to easily run any available binary in an ad-hoc way :star_struck:

Please report if anything doesn’t work, I’m new to the “julia apps” setup.

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