For larger programs, as well as for programs that are required to run
on systems that do not have the SWI-Prolog development system installed,
creating a saved state is the best solution. A saved state is created
using qsave_program/[1,2]
or the -c command line option. A saved state is a file
containing machine-independent14The
saved state does not depend on the CPU instruction set or endianness.
Saved states for 32- and 64-bits are not compatible. Typically, saved
states only run on the same version of Prolog on which they have been
created. intermediate code in a format dedicated for fast
loading. Optionally, the emulator may be integrated in the saved state,
creating a single file, but machine-dependent, executable. This process
is described in chapter 14.
