Re: [Sbcl-help] alien.so / distributing a standalone SBCL app

[Keith I. <kei...@gm...>]

To whom it may concern:

I managed to figure a way to include the alien.so files I needed for
an sbcl app to be deployed on a system without sbcl (or the exact fasl
compatible sbcl) installed.

I don't think this is a general solution, but it Works For Me (tm). 
My app is a version of the ubiquitous "Planet" aggregation software
and is meant to be run as a command line utility with help from a
config file.

Example:

  planet.sh retrieve render --config=planet.config

The planet.sh file is a bash shell script which wraps an invocation to
the sbcl runtime and core file I include in the binary app bundle. 
The tarball looks something like:

  ./core/cl-planet.core
  ./core/usr/local/lib/sbcl/sb-bsd-sockets/alien.so
  ./core/usr/local/lib/sbcl/sb-posix/alien.so
  ./planet.sh
  ./planet.config
  ./planet-styles.css
  ./default-head.html

and so on.  As you'll see in this build script, I force the
*shared-objects* objects to use a relative path name (starting with
"./core"), which works as long as you invoke the script from within
the deployment directory.  Given that this isn't (yet) meant to be
deployed as an rpm or dep where I can count on absolute paths, this
works well enough for me.

The context for this technique is based on the helpful how-to at:

    http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~tsiivola/log/3309245899.html

The following build.lisp is also at:

    http://paste.lisp.org/display/6607

Hope this helps at least someone!

Keith
----

;;;; -*- mode: lisp; syntax: common-lisp; -*-

(require 'asdf)
(require 'cl-planet)

(use-package :lib-planet)

(setf *invoke-debugger-hook*
      (lambda (condition hook)
        (declare (ignore hook))
        (format *error-output* "error: ~a~%" condition)
        (sb-ext:quit :unix-status 1 :recklessly-p t)))

(defun copy-file (source target-dir)
  (ensure-directories-exist target-dir)
  (sb-ext:run-program "/bin/cp" (list source target-dir)))

(defun save-aliens ()
  (let ((aliens sb-alien::*shared-objects*))
    (dolist (alien aliens)
      (let* ((source (sb-alien::shared-object-file alien))
	     (target (concatenate 'string "./core" source)))
	(copy-file source target)
	(setf (sb-alien::shared-object-file alien) target)))))

(defun run ()
  (cl-planet:planet-main (cdr sb-ext:*posix-argv*)))

(progn
  (save-aliens)
  (sb-ext:save-lisp-and-die "core/cl-planet.core" :toplevel #'run))




On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 10:44:11 +0200 (EET), Nikodemus Siivola
<tsi...@cc...> wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Keith Irwin wrote:
> 
> > SO, is there a solution to this OTHER than installing SBCL on the host
> > machine?  Could I, for instance, do something interesting just before
> > save-lisp-and-die to change that path?
> 
> Yes, though currently it involves some low-level hackamagick; I hope
> to "some day" provide a contrib module to do this bundling (unless
> someone else does it first), but not right now.
> 
> Approximately:
> 
>   Look at sb-alien::*shared-objects*; it's a list of
>   sb-alien::shared-object structures corresponding to the loaded shared
>   objects. You need to copy all of the .so-files pointed to by these into
>   your bundle, _and_ change the sb-alien::file slots of these
>   structures correspondingly (the value of the file slot should be the
>   unix-namestring of the pathname.) Don't touch the sap slot.
> 
>   If you're confused by this, looking at src/code/foreign-load.lisp in
>   the SBCL source tree may help.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
>   -- Nikodemus              Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."
>                    Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."
>