Warp – self-contained, single binary applications • Hacker News Board

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#11

Post by open-source-ux » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

It's fascinating how self-contained binaries are now coveted as such a desirable feature. Dozens of languages (if not more) were capable of this decades ago. In fact, some of them could generate self-contained binaries that allowed you to bundle app assets like icons and images inside the executable - no additional add-ons needed. And they were native executables, not complicated wrappers with layer upon layer of different technologies.

This is not to take anything away from this project, just making an observation. The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re-discovering what went before.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#12

Post by ealexhudson » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #5

TheDong wrote: post #2

This sounds like a much less general binctr [0]. I don't see how warp handles the most trivial case of a dynamically linked executable; I see no references to patchelf or other such tricks to ensure it looks within the application's cache directory for dynamically linked libraries, nor do I see any mount namespaces. Does warp do that? Why would I use warp if it doesn't when there are more generic solutions that can h…

> This sounds like a much less general binctr. binctr is Linux-only, and appears to need Docker as a runtime requirement? This has neither constraint, apparently?

I wrote stowage.org to do something similar, having a Docker runtime (which stowage _does_ have) is actually pretty neat in a couple of ways because you also get a kind of basic package management for free. It's pretty nice for sharing dev tools amongst a team. Maybe these things don't have broad use cases, but I think there are a lot of solvable pains here.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#13

Post by munk-a » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #6

Based on the readme, this is basically an SFX archive, which runs a binary upon completion of extraction to temporary folder, much like winzip & the like have created for ages.

That's a bit odd, with weird system configuration you'd still be able to inject a bad .dll or .so as a priority shared library. I don't know why you wouldn't just prefer to bundle all the function references into a single binary blob.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#14

Post by regecks » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

jpic wrote: post #8

w8rbt wrote: post #4

Very neat. Would like to see more languages targeting single binaries. This is one reason (I believe) that has made Go so popular.

I wish also had this. However, containers work. Not sure why they do java though, i thought java has been happy with jars so far.

If anybody is thinking about Java, check Graal out. I was able to successfully create fast, completely static ELF binaries of real JVM applications from fat JARs (not in the fake self-executable archive way).

It's still early days in terms of what's available in the runtime (e.g. the AWT subsystem is missing), but it's pretty damn impressive anyway.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#15

Post by weberc2 » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #11

It's fascinating how self-contained binaries are now coveted as such a desirable feature. Dozens of languages (if not more) were capable of this decades ago. In fact, some of them could generate self-contained binaries that allowed you to bundle app assets like icons and images inside the executable - no additional add-ons needed. And they were native executables, not complicated wrappers with layer upon layer of dif…

> The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re-discovering what went before.

It might feel that way, but this is driven by economics. Basically disk, memory, and bandwidth is far cheaper than it used to be so who cares if you waste a GB or so copying the same libraries all over if you don't have to solve for dependency hell?

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#16

Post by munk-a » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

w8rbt wrote: post #4

Very neat. Would like to see more languages targeting single binaries. This is one reason (I believe) that has made Go so popular.

It is nice to have the option to go with either path. I think it's a bit less relevant in the modern development world but it can also be nice to leverage dynamic linking to present several executable entry points that share a large pool of common logic between them.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#17

Post by IanCal » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #11

It's fascinating how self-contained binaries are now coveted as such a desirable feature. Dozens of languages (if not more) were capable of this decades ago. In fact, some of them could generate self-contained binaries that allowed you to bundle app assets like icons and images inside the executable - no additional add-ons needed. And they were native executables, not complicated wrappers with layer upon layer of dif…

> This is not take anything away from this project, just making an observation. The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re-discovering what went before.

I think part of this comes from various tradeoffs becoming more or less important at different times. Processing power goes up so you move to fat clients, then people move to battery powered devices and heavy lifting makes more sense on servers again.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#18

Post by matthewbauer » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

I think it’s funny to use java as an example when jar files have been around forever. Still there are some use cases for other things where statically linking is not possible.

I wonder what benefits this has over other solutions? Originally when it said multi-platform i thought it meant that one binary could run on multiple platforms like a fat binary. But i think all of the examples require you to have a specific target in mind.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#19

Post by cjfont » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

jpic wrote: post #8

w8rbt wrote: post #4

Very neat. Would like to see more languages targeting single binaries. This is one reason (I believe) that has made Go so popular.

I wish also had this. However, containers work. Not sure why they do java though, i thought java has been happy with jars so far.

JARs are okay, but they still require you to have the java runtime installed in order for them to execute.

Re: Warp – self-contained, single binary applications

#20

Post by Koshkin » Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #15

open-source-ux wrote: post #11

It's fascinating how self-contained binaries are now coveted as such a desirable feature. Dozens of languages (if not more) were capable of this decades ago. In fact, some of them could generate self-contained binaries that allowed you to bundle app assets like icons and images inside the executable - no additional add-ons needed. And they were native executables, not complicated wrappers with layer upon layer of dif…

> The programming field often feels like it's in a giant loop constantly re-discovering what went before. It might feel that way, but this is driven by economics. Basically disk, memory, and bandwidth is far cheaper than it used to be so who cares if you waste a GB or so copying the same libraries all over if you don't have to solve for dependency hell?

> disk is far cheaper

Not in the cloud.