Deployment and Distribution: Shipping Racket Apps | Schema Programming Part 23

You've built an amazing Racket app. How do you give it to a friend who doesn't have Racket installed? You create a Standalone Executable.

Creating an Executable

The raco exe command compiles your source into a native binary.

raco exe my-app.rkt

This creates my-app.exe (on Windows) or my-app (on Mac/Linux). However, this executable still depends on Racket libraries being present.

Creating a Distribution

To make it truly standalone, you need to bundle the runtime and libraries.

raco distribute my-dist my-app.exe

This creates a folder my-dist/ containing:

• bin/my-app.exe
• lib/ (all necessary DLLs and collection code)

You can zip this folder and send it to anyone!

Cross-Compilation?

Racket generally does not support cross-compilation (creating a Windows .exe from a Mac). You typically need to run raco distribute on the OS you are targeting (e.g., using GitHub Actions or a VM).

Summary

raco exe and raco distribute turn Racket from a "scripting language" into a simplified application delivery platform. You can even generate installers!