Simon Willison August 24, 2026 1 min signal 2026-08-24

Your executable is a SQLite database

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24th August 2026 - Link Blog

Your executable is a SQLite database (via) Farid Zakaria describes a neat Linux pattern for creating a SQLite database file that can be directly used as an executable binary.

The trick sets the SQLite file format's 4-byte application ID (68 bytes into the file) to SELF, standing for Structured Executable & Linkable Format. The various components of the ELF executable format are then arranged into a number of different SQLite tables, using this schema.

Their self-exec interpreter (C code here) can then extract and execute the necessary pieces.

You can additionally use a Linux mechanism called binfmt_misc to teach the kernel to execute that any time it encounters an executable matching that binary pattern. Farid uses NixOS here, but without NixOS I think registration looks something like this:

printf '%s\n' ':self:M:68:SELF::/usr/local/bin/self-exec:' \

/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register

Posted 24th August 2026 at 11:38 am

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