Re: [DotGNU]Concept: Box files

[Rhys Weatherley]

Peter Minten wrote:

> Java has jar files that make it possible to send a program in a nice small
> package over the internet and to run it straight from that package without
> unzipping or anything. This maybe useful to IL bytecode programs too, 
> especially
> since IL programs tend to have extras like resource files that need to be send
> with the executable.

Resources can be bound to the IL executable during link time,
so that there is only one file to be distributed.  This is
already supported in pnet's toolchain.

There's still the issue of distributing a .exe with any .dll's,
scripts, docs, source, etc, that it may require.

There are two separate problems here: installing an IL app
locally, and downloading an IL app for immediate execution.

In the first instance, it sounds like you want some kind of
package format, similar to .rpm or .deb.  Rather than inventing
yet another packaging system, it may be best to reuse one of those.

Perhaps one of the Debian gurus on the list could tell us how
.deb's can be adapted to install portable executable formats.
I believe that Andrew Mitchell already solved this for the
pnetmark Debian package, which is a pure-IL application.

In the case of "download and run" scenarios, the assemblies
already act as a kind of .jar file, so I'm not sure that a
.box format would really help us.

Cheers,

Rhys.