I have configured and compile Tcl/Tk v8.60 on a USB flash drive that appears to work on whatever Windows 2000 and later operating system without leaving behind files. It's very nice to have a portable scripting language that also works with other portable apps such as Notepad++ and Console v2.00.
One of the Tcl/Tk Google+ community members has asked me to create a portable app version of the Tcl/Tk toolkit. Because I haven't created a true portable application (ie. installer, directory structure and so on) I am a reticent to say "yes". But, I'm willing to give it a go.
Since Tcl/Tk isn't an "application" as much as it is a "SDK" or "toolkit", it appears most of the instruction are geared for applications... so that leaves me in a quandry. How do I bundle up a development product instead of an application (ie. with shortcuts and so on). The only "shortcut" might be to the Tclsh shell. Unfortunately, an external shell such as DOS or Console is required to display the interface.
Any pointers would be a great help, as I would really like to give something back to the community here at PortableApps.
Thanks!
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Since the Tcl/Tk is a toolkit, as you say, you could make it into a plugin that installs to the CommonFiles folder. Other apps that are like this include jPortable and Ghostscript Portable. When they're installed as such, they're available in a common location for any apps that want to use them. Hope this helps, or at least guides you in the right direction.
darksabre76 - That's something to consider. Tcl comes with a shell, which draws a CLI dialog on screen. Tk displays a simple dialog box on-screen with a simple CLI too. Other than that, Tcl/Tk is a collection of libraries, help files, and samples. It is similar to the jPortable and Ghostscript Portable mentioned above.
Bradley Jennings
putting "knowledge" in "Teknowledgey".
Hi,
Since TCL/Tk was created with universality in mind, TCL/Tk is by nature "portable", i.e. scripts written with it are portable from CPU and OS platform to others. This is (execution) portability.
Portable.apps might rather refer to "transportable" apps, i.e. execute without installing, giving apps the ability to run off a removable device as usb stick or CD/DVD-ROM
TCL/Tk is portable (as I said before), but is transportable too !
In fact TCL/Tk is deployable with the TCLKit, STARKit and STARPack framework, a really simple and rapid deployment way.
A TCLKit is a one-file TCL/Tk runtime with extensions included (interpreter and integrated libraries, including the [incr]TCL/Tk object oriented extension, VFS Virtual File System, and MetaKit a really cool and flexible file-oriented database).
This TCLKit is compiled and downlable for all major OS/CPU platform.
A STARKit is a one file TCL/Tk application (script, dependant libraries, configuration files and data-files) embedded in a MetaKit database file.
Executing this application is as simpler as launching TCLKit with the STARKit as its argument (drag'n drop feasible for "clickodromes'users" as one can always do with Windows or MacOSX).
A STARPack is a one-file executable combination of a TCLKit and a STARKit. Wow, that's really pretty cool
So in fine to be abble to run TCL/Tk in a transportable manner, one could do this :
- download and copy the right TCLKit on a USB stick (i.e tclkit-8.5-win32.exe for Windows/x86-64 platform)
- write a TCL script (shall we call it "myscript.tcl") on this USB stick
- launch and execute this script from where you want, i.e. where the USB stick is plugged : explore the USB stick, drag'n drop "myscript.tcl" over "tclkit-8.5-win32.exe" ... and voilà
You could even do a transportable and portable TCL/Tk environment, as I've done : just add to the USB stick all the TCLKits for the tragetted OS/CPU platform, and run your script unmodified near everywhere (Windows, Mac classic, MacOS X, Linux/x86, Linux/x86-64, Linux/Alpha, Linux/PPC, Linux/390).
If there isn't a TCLKit available for your OS/CPU platform, you can use JACL and SWANK
You could also build you TCL/Tk developpement environment with SpecTCL (Pure TCL/Tk GUI-Builder), Editt (Pure TCL/Tk dev editor) ...
Links :
* TCLKit, STARKit, STARPack :
-- http://equi4.com/tclkit/
-- http://equi4.com/starkit/index.html
* JACL, SWANK :
-- http://wiki.tcl.tk/1637
-- http://tcljava.sourceforge.net/docs/website/getstart.html
-- https://kenai.com/projects/swank
-- https://jtcl-project.github.io/jtcl/docs/jtcl-swank-paper.pdf
I apologize for the length of this comment :-| sorry
Enjoy !