Can I mix text with binary in linux?

Question

I want to simplify installation of the app on Linux system, to make it sort of one click. To do that I hope to combine bash script with compressed tar.

So I have install.sh and some_app.tar.gz files.

Then I have an Ant task that does this:

cat install.sh some_app.tar.gz > some_app.exe

In short, file reads itself, decompresses tarball and extracts files and changes permissions.

When I run install.sh separately it works fine, but once I run some_app.exe it fails with the following error:

/some_app.exe: line 4: Binary file (standard input) matches + 1: arithmetic syntax error

So I wonder if text can be combined with binary?

Possible duplicate of [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/955460/how-do-linux-binary-installers-bin-sh-work) — Rom1, Jun 03 '11 at 20:32

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 03 '11 at 20:35

4

Perfectly feasible.

Example: http://www.stuartwells.net/slides/selfextract.htm

answered Jun 03 '11 at 20:35

erickzetta

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '11 at 20:38

0

What you are looking for are Bash Self-Extracting Tar files.

answered Jun 03 '11 at 20:38

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 03 '11 at 21:06

0

Already done :P ... http://megastep.org/makeself/

answered Jun 03 '11 at 21:06

Pablo Castellazzi

4,164
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Can I mix text with binary in linux?

3 Answers3