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The question is simple; Is it possible to convert a bash script into an executable? and if it is, how can it be done?
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To make the program executable from anywhere for all users, we can add it to the global profile settings in /etc/profile. We should note that /etc/profile and ~/. bash_profile are specific to the Bash shell. Other shells will likely use different locations.
The simplest way to compile Bash is: cd to the directory containing the source code and type `./configure' to configure Bash for your system. If you're using csh on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh ./configure' instead to prevent csh from trying to execute configure itself.
It's possible, but you don't want to.
In places where support for compiling a script into a standalone executable is available, this is done by putting a copy of the interpreter into the executable. This is, thus, much larger than the script alone.
The execution model used by bash, unfortunately, is innately slow: Almost all functionality is provided by external commands; and simple commands' arguments, or even their names, can be modified by the result of expansion operations. This level of dynamicism makes effective compilation for performance impossible. (zsh supports a precompilation process, but the benefit is limited, mostly to the process of parsing itself).
Take shc, for instance: It literally passes the script's original source as a command-line argument. Thus, that source can be read simply by reading the command-line arguments out of /proc, or using strace.
As they say, "security by obscurity is no security at all" -- anyone who's reasonably competent could trivially extract any passwords or other content obfuscated in this way.
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