Re: Cannot generate a stand-alone program + other questions

[Matthew Flatt <mflatt@cs.utah.edu>]

Quoting "Maurizio Ferreira":
> 1 ) I tried to generate a stand-alone program issuing the following
> commands:
> 
> mzc --gui-exe test.scm
> 
> but received the following error message
> 
> MzScheme compiler (mzc) version 103, Copyright (c) 1996-2000 PLT
> mzc: expects <file or collection> [<file or sub-collection>] ... on the
> command
> line, given 0 arguments

test.scm was used as the argument to --gui-exe, which is a target
executable name. I think you wanted

   mzc  --gui-exe test.exe  test.scm

> 2) The manual is  not clear if I need or not a c compiler to generate a
> stand-alone application
> do I have to ?

Not with --exe or --gui-exe.

> 3) I see that the program 'games.exe' is very small.
> I suppose it would run only in presence of the full installed environment,

Yes.

> anyway, what are the steps to build a similar program ?

"games.exe" is a launcher. The "launcher" collection provides Scheme
functions like `make-mred-launcher' to create launchers.

But a launcher generally works best when the program files are in a
collection, such as plt/collects/games. Then, if you're using a
collection, you can provide an "info.ss" file that tells Setup PLT to
make a launcher.

For example, here is the "info.ss" from the plt/collects/games collection:

 (lambda (request failure)
   (case request
     [(name) "Games"]
     [(mred-launcher-libraries) (list "games.ss")]
     [(mred-launcher-names) (list "Games")]
     [else (failure)]))

Together, then `mred-launcher-libraries' and `mred-launcher-names' tags
cause Setup PLT to create a launcher named "Games".exe that loads the
local file "games.ss".

Matthew