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

Joe Armstrong erlang@REDACTED
Thu Sep 21 21:27:09 CEST 2017


On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 5:45 PM, 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

Yup - the last time I did this I changed the preloaded erlang files to
read the data that I had appended to the stub ...

/Joe



>
>
> 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/
>
> 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> 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> 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> wrote:
>> >>>> Hello,
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On 20 Sep 2017, at 13.35, Stu Bailey <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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