Is it possible to cross-compile Racket?

[Leff Ivanov]

Is it possible for example running DrRacket on Windows to generate standalone native executables for Mac OSX and some generic Linux distribution?

[Matthew Flatt]

It should be possible from the command line, although there's a lot of
room to improve the tooling.


See

http://docs.racket-lang.org/raco/cross-system.html?q=raco%20exe

for the main hint. When you want to use your Windows installation and
pretend that you're running on some target platform (e.g., to generate
executables), you use

racket -C -G ‹cross-dir›/etc -X ‹cross-dir›/collects -l- raco ....

where ‹cross-dir› is an installation for the target platform.


To get a ‹cross-dir›, unpack the corresponding "Minimal Racket" tarball
from

http://download.racket-lang.org/releases/6.11/

Most likely, you'll need some packages in that installation to use for
your executable, so you'll set up the packages for a ‹cross-dir› with

racket -C -G ‹cross-dir›/etc -X ‹cross-dir›/collects -l- raco pkg install ....


When whatever packages your program uses are ready in ‹cross-dir›, then

racket -C -G ‹cross-dir›/etc -X ‹cross-dir›/collects -l- raco exe ....
racket -C -G ‹cross-dir›/etc -X ‹cross-dir›/collects -l- raco dist ....

should work to produce an executable and then a distribution.

[Matt Jadud]

I've wondered this many times, and never investigated it.

Thank you both for the question and answer.