4 ms·

Shar has done this for a long time. http://linux.die.net/man/1/shar http://linux.die.net/man/1/shar

• kazinator 11y ago
  Indeed, and the complete lack of credit for the idea on the makeself page is irritating. It's written from the point of view of "I invented this neat idea of producing a self-extracting archive that is a shell script". The opening paragraph desperately needs a sentence which begins like this: "This is similar to the traditional shar that we all know about, but better because ...".
• teraflop 11y ago
  If my history-spelunking is correct, BSD shar is 21 years old and makeself is 17 years old, so the relative difference is not that large.
  • spc476 11y ago
    The Wikipedia page for shar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shar) lists a variation on shar being developed for VMS back in 1987 (28 years ago), so shar is older than that.
    • teraflop 11y ago
      Hmm, that's true. BSD4.4 seems to have been the oldest version of Unix that included shar, so maybe before that point it was a separately distributed tool? I guess if the answer is anywhere, it'll be on Usenet, but Google Groups' search-by-date functionality is hopelessly broken.
      • bbanyc 11y ago
        Earliest known post to Usenet was from Jim Rees in 1982, who credited James Gosling. For his part Gosling thinks it was originally written circa 1979. https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/shar_a_blast_from_the https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/shar_a_blast_from_the
        • teraflop 11y ago
          Nice job tracking that down!