executable-dist-plugin VS tableflip

I feel like i'm taking crazy pills (at a low dose) when i read this stuff.

I deploy Java applications. In a runnable condition, they aren't a single file, but they aren't many - maybe a dozen jars plus some scripts. Our build process puts all that in a tarball. Deployment comprises copying the tarball to the server, then unpacking it [1].

That is one step more than deploying a single binary, but it's a trivial step, and both steps are done by a release script, so there is a single user-visible step.

The additional pain associated with deploying a tarball rather than a single binary is negligible. It simply is not worth worrying about [2].

But Go enjoyers make such a big deal of this single binary! What am i missing?

Now, this post does talk about Docker. If you use Docker to deploy, then yes, that is more of a headache. But Docker is not the only alternative to a single binary! You can just deploy a tarball!

[1] We do deploy the JDK separately. We have a script which takes a local path to a JDK tarball and a hostname, and installs the JDK in the right place on the target machine. This is a bit caveman, and it might be better to use something like Ansible, or make custom OS packages for specific JDKs, or even use something like asdf. But we don't need to deploy JDKs very often, so the script works for us.

[2] Although if you insist, it's pretty easy to make a self-expanding-and-running zip, so you could have a single file if you really want: https://github.com/vmware-archive/executable-dist-plugin

> Some of this is probably going to have to be done in your application...

FWICT tableflip does exactly this: https://github.com/cloudflare/tableflip