Spinel Backend experimental

The spinel: backend compiles a Ruby command-line tool from a GitHub repository into a native executable with Spinel, Matz's Ruby AOT compiler. The result needs neither Ruby nor Spinel to run.

WARNING

This backend is experimental, and it may not stay. Spinel is young, and the backend is only worth keeping while Spinel takes off and the backend stays cheap to maintain. If either stops being true, it will be removed. Enable it with mise settings experimental=true.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux (Windows is not supported).
• git.
• The spinel compiler on PATH, or its path in the spinel tool option. Spinel ships as source: see its Quick Start to build it.
• A C compiler, which Spinel invokes to produce the executable.

Spinel supports only part of the Ruby language, so many Ruby tools will not compile. The backend compiles a single entrypoint file. It does not install gems, copy data files, or fetch submodules.

Usage

mise settings experimental=true

Most tools need options, such as the entrypoint, so declare them in mise.toml and then install:

[tools."spinel:tobi/try"]
version = "1.10.1"
entrypoint = "try.rb"
bin = "try"
tag_prefix = "v"

mise install

mise ls-remote spinel:tobi/try lists the repository's git tags (via git ls-remote, not the GitHub API). With tag_prefix = "v", the tag v1.10.1 is the version 1.10.1.

Tool Options

The following tool-options are available for the spinel backend—these go in [tools] in mise.toml.

entrypoint

The Ruby file to compile, relative to the repository root. Defaults to main.rb.

bin

The name of the executable written to bin/. Defaults to the repository name.

tag_prefix

Text before the version in each git tag, such as v. Only tags with the prefix are listed.

source_ref

A full 40-character commit SHA to build instead of the tag. The version is then only a label.

spinel

The compiler to run. Defaults to spinel on PATH.

Implementation: src/backend/spinel.rs.