Standalone Binaries

If you want to build a self-contained graphix binary with your package and all it’s dependencies baked in (for deployment, distribution, or use as a custom application), you can create a main.gx program in your packages’ src/graphix directory, which will enable the package to be built as a standalone binary.

Adding a Main Program

Create src/graphix/main.gx in your package with the program to run at startup:

"Hello from my standalone app!"

During normal library use (e.g. when loaded via graphix package add), main.gx is excluded from the virtual filesystem and has no effect. It only activates the package is building as standalone binary. This is very similar to Python’s

if __name__ == '__main__':

mechanism, except it is … somewhat less ugly to look at.

Building

From your package directory:

cd graphix-package-mylib
graphix package build-standalone

This builds a release-optimized binary named after your package’s short name (mylib here) in the current directory that includes your local package and all its dependencies. The build enables the standalone cargo feature on your package, which embeds main.gx as the program the binary runs: every argument the binary is given is the program’s own (sys::args()).

Scaffolded packages already include [features] standalone = [] in their Cargo.toml. If you created your package before this feature existed, add it manually:

[features]
standalone = []

The resulting binary is fully standalone — it doesn’t require graphix package add or any runtime .gx files in order to run.