I am having a really tuff time trying to figure out how to generate a redistributable executable with julia. Can you point me in the right direction on a the main webpage to where this is explained in detail?

Zero order answer: You can’t. First order answer: Apps · PackageCompiler. 10th order answer: GitHub - tshort/StaticCompiler.jl: Compiles Julia code to a standalone library (experimental)

-1st order answer: Why do you want to?

So its a programming language to heal the planet together, but you can’t make a redistributable binary for non-tech people to be able to take advantage of it?? Seems counter to Edelman’s TEDxMIT talk. Besides that I would think that a programmer would want to lock down his code into an executable binary file before handing it over to a user for production use. Sincerely, Jon

I have tried PackageCompiler. I don’t understand what it produced. It looked like it produced a bunch of object files for the julia base system dependencies and a copy of the julia program itself, but no exe other than that. Did I miss something? Sincerely, Jon

Dear Jon: I don’t know about healing the planet. But creating a standalone app in julia would certainly be desirable. It is not possible yet in a practical way. The first order answer in @carstenbauer’s post allows you to do that. The disadvantage is that you must bundle the whole julia runtime with it, which produces a very large executable even for the smallest examples. The efforts to get StaticCompiler seem promising but there is still some way to cover before that is practical to do and works in all situations.

I guess part of this is much of the Julia community are idealists, “locking down the code” doesn’t sound like an advantage to me.

Hi @Jon_Marcum, it is possible to create an executable with PackageCompiler, try to follow the documentation on Apps · PackageCompiler, especially the part of creating an app using the creat_app function. Once you ran everything the executable should be inside the compiled_app folder that you passed to the function. For the executable to work you must share the entire folder that comes with the dependencies.

I’ll try that again. It didn’t seem to work right the couple of times I did it. Thanks

I would think you wouldn’t want an end user monkeying around with your code and detrimentally changing the program for the intended purpose. This would be especially true for mission critical software like structural engineering software or satellite or plane telemetry tracking software. You are wanting the software to work as expected and not have just anyone to have access to a script file to change it beyond its intended purpose for ill or for good.

Compiling to exe

New to Julia

PetrKryslUCSD August 30, 2022, 4:10pm 7

It is possible to do this: How to give someone your code to run

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Compiling to exe

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