ScriptBasic program can be "compiled" to executable directly under Windows and Linux. To do this you should use the option `-E' and you should also specify an output file using the option `-o'. For example:
scriba -Eo queens.exe queens.bas
will generate an executable file `queens.exe' that will run the BASIC program `queens.bas'. When using this option the ScriptBasic interpreter will ignore any cached precompiled code and will compile the BASIC program from source code fresh.
Note that this kind of compilation works only on Linux and Windows and the generated file is operating system specific, and can not run on any other operating system. Beta test users reported that the feature works on FreeBSD and on Solaris, but the developers lacking test resources can not guarantee this.
Although the ScriptBasic interpreter compiled and installed on other operating system (above Windows and Linux) will accept these options and will generate a file it may not be usable. This feature uses the specialties of the executable format of Windows and Linux.
The compilation to executable is not a real compilation, in the sense that the program is not compiled into real machine code, and thus do not expect it running faster or using less memory. This methodology only creates the intermediary code that the ScriptBasic execution module uses and puts it into an executable file that also contains the interpreter. The final executable will contain the binary code of the BASIC program and will execute the same way as it would execute running the original file.
In the rest of this chapter we detail how the BASIC to EXE direct compilation works.