Feature request: node.exe to unpack and run scripts attached to the tail of the binary

[Mithgol]

JSDB engine, based on Mozilla SpiderMonkey, can be used to produce «standalone» look of JavaScript applications for Windows; JSDB accepts scripts packed and attached to the tail of its jsbd.exe binary, according to the tutorial:

c:\temp>pkzip program.zip main.js
c:\temp>copy /b jsdb.exe+program.zip program.exe

I wonder if some very similar feature can be implemented in node.exe engine as well. (Of course, with index.js instead of main.js, according to Node's conventions.)

[Nashev]

Yes, i want this too, to make simple deployable single-exe portable app's on node.js for my users

[yayscripting]

Yes please :), would be wonderful!

[prabirshrestha]

+1 this would be awesome.

[nevf]

Another +1. I'd love to be able to package up Node and MongoDB and all associated JS code into a distributable executable.

[ghost]

+1

[Mithgol]

Note: there is a JavaScript MIT-licensed ZIP unpacker node-zip, based on JSZip.

However, those modules could not be merged into Node's core to fix this issue, because that would require signing the CLA from all of those modules' authors, and that I cannot imagine.

[matthewkastor]

It would be nice to have something like this. I've been playing with JSDB this afternoon and found this feature request because I had the same idea "this would be fun to fuck with on node". :D

I saw some other hacks around the web but people always complained that they couldn't mash their entire project (with modules and all) into the executable. This is what would be ideal, some magical compiler to generate a single executable...

There was an embedder project for php too http://wildphp.free.fr/wiki/doku.php?id=win32std:embeder where I suppose you could embed everything. It's just that embedded resources aren't files so the code all had to be changed...

This would be awesome though. If it would be that simple.

[bnoordhuis]

I have zero interest in adding that functionality to node.js core. It's fairly straightforward to implement but we're not going to. Closing.

[matthewkastor]

Thank you for your clear and definitive answer! :D

[Mithgol]

A note for future references: node-webkit engine (which adds Chromium to Node) can unpack and run applications attached to the tail of its binary. (See the manual.)

That's why, if you have some compelling necessity to make your application attached to the tail of its underlying engine, you now have a real option to run your application in a GUI window (based on node-webkit) instead of a console (based on Node without Chromium).

[vicary]

Windows only feature built in core, doesn't sound right to me. Mac and Linux can simply do #! /bin/env node.

[Mithgol]

Well, any Windows-only feature won't do any harm to Mac and Linux users because, obviously, it won't be built in Mac and Linux versions where unnecessary.

[indutny]

The thing is that we a trying to avoid doing platform-specific changes in node.js where possible. Every platform-specific code goes to libuv, and I don't see any place for this API in it.

[matthewkastor]

@indutny That is a great policy! :D A quick look inside any of the programs in my program files folder reveals that pretty much every application consists of more than a single executable file! :O Oh the horror! The horror! Even my node installation has a node_modules subfolder! :O

[rodrigoalvesvieira]

@indutny :+1: