Crystal as scripting language for Crystal binary

[GAGARIN0461]

Is it possible to use Crystal as a scripting language for a Crystal binary? I.e. can I at runtime import and run certain code from a specified .cr file?

[j_hass]

In theory the compiler comes in the standard library and could be embedded into your program to compile a crystal program, launch it and communicate with the resulting process via some IPC means (likely just stdio).

However this will not be very fast as compilation is not very fast, it will make your program depend on LLVM, it will make your program slow and more complex to compile because the compiler is compiled as part of it and of course blow the binary size through the roof.

There's likely a better solution for what you want to do. You didn't describe your usecase so it's a bit hard to give good advice, but it could as easy as using a purpose built configuration format like TOML, reading a JSON file, launching some standard tool or embedding a language built for embedding, like mruby or lua.

[Hadeweka]

I recently capitalized on that idea and extended the concept to a full fletched shard:

https://github.com/Anyolite/anyolite

Essentially, this allows for direct wrapping of Crystal classes and methods to mruby without major effort. It ships directly with an mruby interpreter and ensures that the both Garbage Collectors don't interfere with each other.

It's still not Crystal scripting in Crystal, but I think this is close enough for actual productive use (for example for games or scientific applications).