README.md

Creating a standalone executable with caxa

Packaging an nbb project

This document provides an example of how to create a standalone executable from an nbb project with caxa.

The print-cli-args directory contains a small project which prints CLI arguments. Normally you would invoke this with:

$ nbb runner.cljs 1 2 3
Your command line arguments: (1 2 3)

Let's turn that project into a standalone executable. Execute this from the print-cli-args directory:

$ npx [email protected] --input . --output print-cli-args -- \
  "{{caxa}}/node_modules/.bin/nbb" "{{caxa}}/runner.cljs"

This produces an executable named print-cli-args of around 30MB. Let's invoke it:

$ ./print-cli-args 1 2 3
Your command line arguments: (1 2 3)

That's it!

Packaging nbb itself

You can also package nbb itself as a standalone executable, which is basically the same as above but without invoking pre-defined command line arguments:

$ npx caxa --input . --output nbb-standalone \
  -- "{{caxa}}/node_modules/.bin/node" "{{caxa}}/node_modules/.bin/nbb"
$ ./nbb-standalone -e '(+ 1 2 3)'
6
$ ./nbb-standalone
Welcome to nbb v0.1.8!
user=>

That wasn't too bad, was it?