It's not widely known, but GNU Emacs works like this.
When you launch the Emacs editor, you're loading an Emacs Lisp image that was populated at build time by running Lisp code, with the resident Lisp definitions "dumped" to make an image file.
The image file used to actually be the `emacs` executable you'd run, using a clever but non-portable mechanism called `unexec` to make an executable.
But as of version 27.1 (in 2020), the image file is separate from the executable for portability reasons.
When you launch the Emacs editor, you're loading an Emacs Lisp image that was populated at build time by running Lisp code, with the resident Lisp definitions "dumped" to make an image file.
The image file used to actually be the `emacs` executable you'd run, using a clever but non-portable mechanism called `unexec` to make an executable.
But as of version 27.1 (in 2020), the image file is separate from the executable for portability reasons.