Since the release of Deno 2.0, I have been increasingly excited about this runtime with each update. Recently, I discovered the ability to compile your project into a binary, which is quite impressive.

If you haven’t installed Deno yet, visit the Deno installation guide.

Quick Example:

1. Initialize a Project:

Create a new folder and run deno init. This command automatically generates a main.ts file with some example code. Let’s modify it to create a simple HTTP server:

// main.ts
Deno.serve({ port: 3000 }, (_req) => {
  return new Response("Hello, World!");
});

2. Compile the Project:

Inside the folder, run the following command to compile your project into a binary:

deno compile — allow-net main.ts
# or less secure way
deno compile -A main.ts

This creates a binary file named after your project folder, in my case, deno-http-server.

3. Run the Binary:

Execute the binary with:

./deno-http-server

That’s it!

Running Inside a Docker Container

To test the binary without having Node.js or Deno installed, we can use a Docker container. First, let’s compile the project for a specific platform:

# For ARM64 architecture:
deno compile - allow-net - target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu main.ts
# For x86_64 architecture:
deno compile - allow-net - target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu main.ts

Next, let’s start an Ubuntu instance, map the current folder to /app, map the ports, and start the binary process:

docker run -it — rm -p 3000:3000 -v ./:/app ubuntu /app/deno-http-server

And voilà! The server is running without any Node or Deno runtime.

There is much more to explore about compiling with Deno. I wanted to introduce you to this feature in the simplest way possible. Be sure to check out the Deno documentation on compiling for more details.

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