Executable Is a SQLite Database

(fzakaria.com)

107 points | by setheron 6 hours ago

9 comments

  • unified101 47 minutes ago
    I don't think this goes far enough! Make the actually app store be the same file itself. so it's a living application and the file is constantly updated to how you use it. Copy it around, and you carry your data wiht you as well.

    Let's go deeper. it's a webserver app + the server code + application code + db, so pocketbase++ where it's also the deployment target.

    Then combine it with APE liek system, and the same file loads and stores things on every platform. evil laugh

    Very cool hacking! My hats off to the author.

  • mongol 23 minutes ago
    So where does this lead to? Is it leading us towards SQLite as some kind of alternative container image format? Because the benefit seems to only occur when it incorporates dependencies
  • ale42 56 minutes ago
    I was thinking that someone managed to put an ELF header in an SQLite file while keeping it compatible with SQLite... but no, "just" a new binary format. Very interesting nevertheless!
  • kjuulh 1 hour ago
    Great read. I always find these turn a feature of a computer into a database an interesting read/idea. It certainly has upside, and downsides. For example having an entire filesystem as a sqlite database etc, or in this case an executable. It would be nice to have a structured way of talking to our utilities, rather than interpreting various commands as json through a few layers of tools to then get the output in a common format. That said I'd probably rather have a split up tool-set, than everything having to be in a single database for it to interoperate.
  • skavi 1 hour ago
    This was super fun. Dude’s been on an absolute tear recently.
  • dolmen 53 minutes ago
    I wonder how flexible is the SQLite binary format to allow to design a tool that would take a SELF binary/db and rewrite it to make BLOB values more mmap-able (OS page aligned) in order to allow shortcuts in the self-exec loader.
  • JSR_FDED 1 hour ago
    I appreciate the inventiveness of this idea. But I don’t find myself thinking I must have this.
  • simonw 1 hour ago
    The word "Your" was dropped from the start of the title for some reason.
    • notpushkin 1 hour ago
      Well, for the usual reason :-)

      I’m wondering if the anti-clickbait filter could benefit from some lightweight LLM integration. E.g. when the submission hits the front page, if the title was “de-clickbaited” and wasn’t changed manually yet, run it through a cheap model and see if that was the right call.

      • aniviacat 1 hour ago
        Maybe "your" at the beginning of a title should be replaced by "my" instead of getting stripped.

        That would preserve the non-clickbait meaning of all such titles I can spontaneously think of.

        • notpushkin 1 hour ago
          “SQLite database as an executable format”? A bit farther away from the original but captures the meaning and sounds more neutral.
  • colinhb 2 hours ago
    The handling of dynamic libraries and closing over them into single dbs made this a fun read.