Re: [Chicken-users] Including binary data in eggs

[Kon Lovett]

On May 22, 2006, at 4:25 PM, Alejandro Forero Cuervo wrote:

> Hi.
>
> For my stream-flash and associated eggs (for generating Shockwave
> Flash files) I want to make the contents of a relatively big binary
> file available for the egg.  My file is called freeserif.fo (and
> contains a tag for Flash that defines a font) and I want to be able to
> access it at run-time.  What should I do?  I see the following
> options:
>
> 1. Actually including the file somehow in my source code.  This would
> be the worst option, since it would be the least maintainable.
>
> 2. Somehow opening and reading the file into a string at compile time.
> How can I do this?  Should I use a macro?

Compile-time or run-time (load-time)? Using eval-when you can read  
the file at the phase of your choice.

> 3. When the egg is installed, make sure the freeserif.fo file gets
> copied to the eggs' directory (I would, obviously, prepend it with the
> name of my egg).  And then, at run time, open the file from that
> directory.  This sounds to me like the best option, assuming some
> framework to do this exists (and by "framework" I simply mean
> something along the lines of having a variable refering to the eggs'
> directory and a way to copy data files there during the installation
> of eggs).
>
> What would you advise me to do?

Copy the any data files to the chicken repository (from bloom- 
filter.setup):

(define-macro (copy-to-repository FN)
        `(copy-file
                (make-pathname "." (->string ,FN))
                (make-pathname (repository-path) (->string ,FN))))

(copy-to-repository "hash-primitives-info")

The srfi-19 egg has an example using sub-directories.

Felix had an answer to a similar question: http://lists.gnu.org/ 
archive/html/chicken-users/2004-02/msg00020.html

You probably would just use '(read-string #f <port>)' since this will  
read to eof.

HTH,
Kon

> Thanks!
>
> Alejo.
> http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/
>
> Ps: I have more details about my Flash egg and some sample files at:
> <http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/chicken%20eggs/stream-flash-round- 
> tree>.
>
>
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