Bin deploy rake (and IronRuby) [closed]

Question

I'm on a .NET project, and I would like to migrate build script from MsBuild to Rake. I don't want to force developers (or build agent machines) to have to install anything, I want it to be self contained. If possible I'd prefer to use IronRuby.

Is it possible to just drop everything in /tools/rake and /tools/IronRuby and have it just work, the way everyone does with NAnt?

I would appreciate any pointers to tutorials on this or blogposts. I'm a complete noob when it comes to Ruby, rake and these gem things.

Answer 1

Yes it is possible, but you pay the cost of bringing the IronRuby runtime with you. That's about 2300 files to deploy so you'd need to pack 7zip with your lib to unpack IronRuby.

I did something similar where I wanted to pack LessCss with IronRuby in one managed wrapper. Turned out to be a totally impracticable solution:

http://www.tigraine.at/2009/08/24/introducing-ironlessnet-your-duct-tape-solution-to-lesscss-in-aspnet/

greetings Daniel

Answer 2

I have a project that will allow you to run IronRuby applications out of a zip file, so you can easily X-Copy deploy the IronRuby standard library along with any gems you may need. Theoretically you could even embed such a zip file in a .dll as a resource, but I'm not sure what you'd get out of that. I created this so that I could embed IronRuby automation in my desktop front end in a straightforward way without adding any extra complication to the deployment phase, but it would probably work just as well for your scenario, maybe with a little tweaking.

http://github.com/PlasticLizard/Bracket

Answer 3

Apparently it's possible to do without needing to bring any of the dependencies with you:

RubyScript2Exe transforms your Ruby application into a standalone, compressed Windows, Linux or Mac OS X (Darwin) executable. You can look at it as a "compiler". Not in the sense of a source-code-to-byte-code compiler, but as a "collector", for it collects all necessary files to run your application on an other machine: the Ruby application, the Ruby interpreter and the Ruby runtime library (stripped down for your application). Anyway, the result is the same: a standalone executable (application.exe). And that's what we want!