[Starkit] Exec and starkits

[Techentin, Robert W.]

Questions and answers have gone around a few times about [exec] and
starkits.  Usuallly the proposed solution is "copy the file out to /tmp[1]
and exec it from there..."  Matthias Hoffmann provides a more general
solution at http://wiki.tcl.tk/12168.

I'm in the process of deploying an app, where starkit/starpack would be the
best distribution method, but I'm stuck executing a compiled program, and it
needs a few data files from the VFS as well.  So I'm thinking about a more
general solution.

I'm thinking that it might be possible to code a new exec, something like
Mathias' 'execx', which tries to solve the problem generally.  Given that
the first argument to exec is a file name, and the rest of the arguments
-might be- file names, it makes me think of a proc which inspects each
argument, determines if it is a file name in the VFS, and if so, copies it
out to /tmp and replaces the word in the exec arguments.

Is this a crazy idea?

If not, what sort of file name transmogifications are reasonable?  [file
normalize] or [file nativename]?

Thanks for any suggestions.
Bob
-- 
Bob Techentin                        techentin.robert at mayo.edu 
Mayo Foundation                                 (507) 538-5495 
200 First St. SW                            FAX (507) 284-9171
Rochester MN, 55901  USA            http://www.mayo.edu/sppdg/ 


[1] "/tmp" generally refers to the various places that temp files could be
put, much as the fileutil package searches environments and directories
differently depending on the platform.