[erlang-questions] Making a minimal distributable program in Erlang.

ILYA Khlopotov ilya.khlopotov@REDACTED
Thu Sep 21 18:11:24 CEST 2017


hi,

I wanted a single file distribution of Erlang programs for a long time.

I was thinking to implement it as follows:
1. extend the loader for *.ez files to support offset
2. extend erlexec to support detection of offset in the executable.
  - in order to avoid patching otp files I was thinking to use -eentry flag for linker to pick main function from my own file.
3. use any technique to bundle beam and *.ez 
  - in Linux the files can be just concatenated 
  - I don't know how to make it crossplatform

is there any documentation how to use make_preload or upx to make the solution cross platform?

best regards,
ILYA

On September 21, 2017 8:45:47 AM PDT, Peer Stritzinger <peer@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>> On 21.09.2017, at 13:15, Frank Muller <frank.muller.erl@REDACTED>
>wrote:
>> 
>> Stefan,
>> 
>> By statically linking bins, Joe is talking about the executables here
>(erl.exe, ...), not the beam files IMHO.
>
>But what you can do is preload all needed beam files, which means they
>get baked into your erts executable.
>
>So you can even have statically linked beam files.  Every Erlang system
>has some of those since quite a lot
>of the system startup is done in Erlang already.   And to get to the
>point where the runtime can load beam files
>you need some preexisting beam files.
>
>When building this is done by this perl script and its surrounding
>Makefile magic:
>
>erts/emulator/utils/make_preload 
>
>Which generates a C file called preload.c starting like:
>
>/*
> * DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE.  It was automatically generated
> * by the `make_preload' program on Fri Jun 23 12:55:01 2017.
> */
>unsigned preloaded_size_otp_ring0 = 532;
>unsigned char preloaded_otp_ring0[] = {
>0x46,0x4f,0x52,0x31,0x00,0x00,0x02,0x0c, /* FOR1.... */
>  0x42,0x45,0x41,0x4d,0x41,0x74,0x6f,0x6d, /* BEAMAtom */
>  0x00,0x00,0x00,0x82,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x10, /* ........ */
>  0x09,0x6f,0x74,0x70,0x5f,0x72,0x69,0x6e, /* .otp_rin */
>  0x67,0x30,0x05,0x73,0x74,0x61,0x72,0x74, /* g0.start */
>  0x04,0x62,0x6f,0x6f,0x74,0x04,0x69,0x6e, /* .boot.in */
>  0x69,0x74,0x03,0x72,0x75,0x6e,0x06,0x65, /* it.run.e */
>  0x72,0x6c,0x61,0x6e,0x67,0x11,0x66,0x75, /* rlang.fu */
>  0x6e,0x63,0x74,0x69,0x6f,0x6e,0x5f,0x65, /* nction_e */
>  0x78,0x70,0x6f,0x72,0x74,0x65,0x64,0x05, /* xported. */
>  0x66,0x61,0x6c,0x73,0x65,0x04,0x74,0x72, /* false.tr */
>  0x75,0x65,0x05,0x66,0x61,0x74,0x61,0x6c, /* ue.fatal */
>  0x05,0x65,0x72,0x72,0x6f,0x72,0x06,0x6d, /* .error.m */
>  0x6f,0x64,0x75,0x6c,0x65,0x07,0x64,0x69, /* odule.di */
>
>And I suppose that you still can hot code load preloaded files, its
>just that their memory isn’t freed
>since it is in the erts executable.
>
>Best,
>-- Peer 
>
>
>> 
>> You'll be able to reload your beam modules on the fly, obviously.
>> 
>> Moreover, nothing prevent a statically built executable to load a
>shared lib while running.
>> 
>> @Joe: just made a quick search and found UPX binary packer. It's
>cross-platform:
>> https://upx.github.io/ <https://upx.github.io/>
>> 
>> Can you please try to shrink the minimal VM binaries on Windows and
>report back the new size?
>> Use: upx.exe -9 ...
>> 
>> /Frank
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> >
>> > So my first question is - how can I compile Erlang into a single
>file
>> > executable? - I want no scripts/batch files to launch erlang no
>DLLs
>> > and a statically linked binary?
>> 
>> Getting rid of scripts/batch files you can do if you generalize the
>erlexec binary a bit (in Docker for instance, as it was mentioned
>before, you perhaps want to be able to configure more things with
>environment variables for instance) but what would "statically linked"
>mean in the world of modules that load shared objects and even modules
>that can be upgraded? To statically link one would have to sacrifice
>the dynamic code reload, right?
>> 
>> /Stefan
>> 
>> >
>> > /Joe
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Frank Muller
>> > <frank.muller.erl@REDACTED <mailto:frank.muller.erl@REDACTED>>
>wrote:
>> >> Do you think it's possible to package this minimal distribution in
>one
>> >> excutable?
>> >>
>> >> Imagine we can ship a whole release in one binary (like in Go).
>> >>
>> >> /Frank
>> >>
>> >> Wed 20 sept. 2017 at 16:23, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED
><mailto:erlang@REDACTED>> wrote :
>> >>>
>> >>> Thanks everybody for you help - I got it down to 5.5MB in 9 files
>> >>> Relocated as follows. I've also packed/compressed the libraries
>> >>>
>> >>> Here are the files that are needed
>> >>>
>> >>> %% DEST/bin/erl.exe                     120320 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/bin/start.boot                    5603 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/erts-9.0/bin/beam.smp.dll      3346944 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/erts-9.0/bin/erlexec.dll        162304 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/erts-9.0/bin/inet_gethost.exec   45568 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/lib/compiler-7.1.ez             409091 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/lib/kernel-5.2.ez               384730 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/lib/sasl-3.0.4.ez               106278 bytes
>> >>> %% DEST/lib/stdlib-3.4.ez               913013 bytes
>> >>>
>> >>> This seems to work :-)
>> >>>
>> >>> Cheers
>> >>>
>> >>> /Joe
>> >>>
>> >>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 2:24 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov
>> >>> <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED <mailto:dmkolesnikov@REDACTED>> wrote:
>> >>>> Hello,
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On 20 Sep 2017, at 13.35, Stu Bailey <stu.bailey@REDACTED
><mailto:stu.bailey@REDACTED>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> "As an afterthought - it would be *very nice* to have a program
>which
>> >>>> makes a minimal distributable program for Windows/Mac/Linux."
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> This program is called relx.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> It generates a release package which are deployable to any
>vanilla linux
>> >>>> or
>> >>>> other vanilla os.
>> >>>> The usage of Docker-image-with-Erlang complicates the process of
>> >>>> distribution.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Best Regards,
>> >>>> Dmitry
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>> _______________________________________________
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