Remove the compiler binary's hard dependency on `node_modules`/node.js in general.

[miviwi]

The issue

As of right now - and correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm writing this up only based on what I know about node.js in general - attempting to do this:

$ git clone https://github.com/lys-lang/lys-compiler.git && cd lys-compiler
$ npm i     # <-pretty sure this isn't strictly necessary?
$ make build
$ # assuming the directly `~/.local/bin` exists and is included in PATH
$ install node_module/.bin/lys ~/.local/bin
$ lys

...results in a "bad" binary in the sense that it throws an error¹ (and I don't mean the one about a missing input file).

On my system it looks very similar to this (I've replaced the path to my home directory with ${HOME}):

node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1412
  throw err;
  ^

Error: Cannot find module './index-bin'
Require stack:
- ${HOME}/.local/bin/lys
    at Function._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1409:15)
    at defaultResolveImpl (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1060:19)
    at resolveForCJSWithHooks (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1065:22)
    at Function._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1214:37)
    at TracingChannel.traceSync (node:diagnostics_channel:322:14)
    at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:234:24)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1495:12)
    at require (node:internal/modules/helpers:135:16)
    at Object.<anonymous> (${HOME}/.local/bin/lys:4:21)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1739:14) {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: [ '${HOME}/.local/bin/lys' ]
}

Node.js v23.6.0

My problem is that lys should be a standalone binary at best... but to be real with ourselves an/some extra *.sos/*.dlls will likely be required. Currently it's very far from that, as I believe to have demonstrated (all this isn't even mentioning the fact it's non-obvious — without looking through node_modules/doing a find — where index-bin.js is even located)

Obviously I'm aware of the fact that an x86/ARM can't execute WASM by itself (😉) which is the crux of the matter here.

My proposition:

1. in the long term completely discard node as our runtime in lieu of a native one
   • ex. wasmtime is super simple — less than 50 lines of code in Python for ex. is able to spit out a native, AOT compiled ELF/Mach-O binary
2. for the time being - introduce some kind of a "bundling" step, so that one can just do something to the effect of install node_modules/**/lys [...] and have it work
   • doesn't necessarily have to be 1 file... just not the ~44 .js files which currently make up the lys/dist directory (not counting the .lys files in stdlib/ as having separate source files is unavoidable in this case); pack them into some archive during make build, then extract into a temp directory at runtime — that sort of thing

Note:

I may have/have likely made many (many) false assumptions here and am aware of such a possibility. Please do correct any errors in my understanding. Having said that though, none of them take away from my broader point I believe.

Footnotes

1. as does the compilation command make build/make lys-build itself (make lys-test is... unaffected somehow?), likely due to incompatibilites with node v23. doesn't seem to matter much though as executing ./node_modules/.bin/lys is fine...? ↩