Could caxa be generalized to package other binary projects + their project sources?

Caxa works very well for Node.js projects. I’ve packaged my ClojureScript interpreter (as a Node.js library) with it and it runs fine:

https://github.com/babashka/nbb/tree/main/doc/caxa

I have another Clojure interpreter project where the interpreter itself is already a binary:

https://github.com/babashka/babashka

The binary is called bb and you would call it with:

bb foo.clj

for example.

Perhaps caxa could support a more general approach than only packaging Node.js applications since the problem is very similar to if I would want to package babashka + some foo.clj script.

[borkdude]

Wow, it already works with bb!

$ echo '(println "Hello world!")' > foo.clj
$ bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/babashka/babashka/master/install) --version 0.7.6-SNAPSHOT --dir .
$ ./bb foo.clj
Hello world!
$ npx caxa --input . --output hello -- "{{caxa}}/bb" "{{caxa}}/foo.clj"
npx: installed 96 in 4.544s
$ ./hello
Hello world!

[leafac]

Does caxa optimize extraction by looking if there was already a previously extracted version of the binary in the cache/temporary directory?

👍 Yes, it does. It’s even smart enough to detect extractions that failed in the middle, or to deal with multiple invocations leading to race conditions on the extraction.