makeself.sh is a small shell script that generates a self-extractable
tar.gz archive from a directory. The resulting file appears as a shell
script (many of those have a .run suffix), and can be launched as is.
The archive will then uncompress itself to a temporary directory and an
optional arbitrary command will be executed (for example an installation
script). This is pretty similar to archives generated with WinZip
Self-Extractor in the Windows world. Makeself archives also include
checksums for integrity self-validation (CRC and/or MD5 checksums).