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I came to know about a tool named CDE from my friend Sukhdeep. CDE or CDEpack (Code, Data, and Environment packaging) is a tool, developed by Philip Guo, that automatically packages up everything required to execute a Linux command on another computer without any installation or configuration.

To use it, you have to download it: 32-bit or 64-bit.

For more visit: http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html

It is the executable file that runs directly (./cde) after changing permissions (chmod 755 cde).

If we have any software and we want to run it another computer then we can follow something like this: For example I have ‘tilda’ installed (a terminal app) then I run:

./cde tilda

Then it will run tilda application like normal and now you can see the new directory named ‘cde-package’ created within same directory where cde executable is located. Under cde-package directory, there will be a complete directory structure created like Linux root and all necessary files (dependencies) are added to them that are needed to run tilda application in this case.

Now as per manual on the website, tar and gzip this package directory:

tar -cvf cde-tilda.tar cde-package/
gzip cde-tilda.tar

You can now transfer the cde-tilda.tar.gz file to any other x86-Linux distro created in the past 5 years. When the package arrives on the target machine, you can unzip it and then run tilda by executing the special tilda.cde wrapper script within the package:

tar -zxvf cde-tilda.tar.gz
cde-package/tilda.cde

But unfortunately this didn’t work for me when I sent this to some friend. I’ll investigate into the matter.