Starkit, Tcl's answer for application delivery and update
Posted: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 20:24
I've been a very active member of the Tcl community for more than 10 years now. It's beginning to become very clear to me that the Puppy community and the Tcl community would both have a lot to be gained from a strengthening of ties between the two groups.
Tcl has been a major component of Puppy since its birth, as far as I can tell. In fact, I first heard about Puppy when someone posted a page about it on the Tclers' Wiki http://wiki.tcl.tk/11951. For the last several years, the hottest area of development in the Tcl Community has been an application development, packaging, and deployment system called Starkit. http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html, created by Tcl luminary Jean Claude Wippler. An excellent paper about the technology, though a bit out of date by now, was presented at the 2002 Tcl Conference, by Steve Landers (of Perth, Australia). http://www.equi4.com/papers/skpaper1.html
Since this forum topic relates to Pups and stuff, I'd like to focus here on Tcl's answer for automated application delivery and update. One of the coolest features of the Starkit system is StarSync, which a Starkit user can use to automatically update the content of a Starkit-based application. http://www.equi4.com/264 Starkits and Starsync greatly simplify the deployment, installation, and updating of Tcl-based applications. The efficiencies of this system, would go a long way towards making Puppy even sleeker and faster than it is now, and keeping it that way.
I'd like to propose that Puppy move to this system for all Tcl-based applications. To do so would be so incredibly simple, that it's almost silly. First of all, the existing Tcl 8.4.9 subsystem of Puppy would be removed, then the single-file Tclkit 8.4.9 runtime would be put into /usr/bin, as well as a Starkit file containing the various Tcl extension libraries, such as Img, Snack, etc., needed to support the existing Tcl apps in Puppy. Then, file extension associations would need to be created for the .tcl and .kit extensions, so that files with those extensions would run on Tclkit. That's it! You're done. With such a change, Puppy will have saved a lot of space, and dramatically improved its capabilities in one fell swoop.
You can download the current single-file-binary release of Tclkit for Linux here http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/8.4.9/tclki ... 86.upx.bin. If you'd like to give it a whirl, just copy it to any directory on your system, rename it to something like "tclkit," make it executable, and download any of the cross-platform Starkits from the Starkit Distribution Archive, lovingly maintained by Steve Landers http://mini.net/sdarchive/. Then all you have to do is set the Rox run action for the .kit file to run with Tclkit, and you're off and running. Now any .kit files you download will 'just work' whenever you click on them. It's so easy.
With a coordinated effort between the Tcl folks and the Puppy mavens, Puppy could become a showcase for the power of the Tcl platform, putting the other bloated Linux distributions out there to shame in the process.
--MDD
Tcl has been a major component of Puppy since its birth, as far as I can tell. In fact, I first heard about Puppy when someone posted a page about it on the Tclers' Wiki http://wiki.tcl.tk/11951. For the last several years, the hottest area of development in the Tcl Community has been an application development, packaging, and deployment system called Starkit. http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html, created by Tcl luminary Jean Claude Wippler. An excellent paper about the technology, though a bit out of date by now, was presented at the 2002 Tcl Conference, by Steve Landers (of Perth, Australia). http://www.equi4.com/papers/skpaper1.html
Since this forum topic relates to Pups and stuff, I'd like to focus here on Tcl's answer for automated application delivery and update. One of the coolest features of the Starkit system is StarSync, which a Starkit user can use to automatically update the content of a Starkit-based application. http://www.equi4.com/264 Starkits and Starsync greatly simplify the deployment, installation, and updating of Tcl-based applications. The efficiencies of this system, would go a long way towards making Puppy even sleeker and faster than it is now, and keeping it that way.
I'd like to propose that Puppy move to this system for all Tcl-based applications. To do so would be so incredibly simple, that it's almost silly. First of all, the existing Tcl 8.4.9 subsystem of Puppy would be removed, then the single-file Tclkit 8.4.9 runtime would be put into /usr/bin, as well as a Starkit file containing the various Tcl extension libraries, such as Img, Snack, etc., needed to support the existing Tcl apps in Puppy. Then, file extension associations would need to be created for the .tcl and .kit extensions, so that files with those extensions would run on Tclkit. That's it! You're done. With such a change, Puppy will have saved a lot of space, and dramatically improved its capabilities in one fell swoop.
You can download the current single-file-binary release of Tclkit for Linux here http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/8.4.9/tclki ... 86.upx.bin. If you'd like to give it a whirl, just copy it to any directory on your system, rename it to something like "tclkit," make it executable, and download any of the cross-platform Starkits from the Starkit Distribution Archive, lovingly maintained by Steve Landers http://mini.net/sdarchive/. Then all you have to do is set the Rox run action for the .kit file to run with Tclkit, and you're off and running. Now any .kit files you download will 'just work' whenever you click on them. It's so easy.
With a coordinated effort between the Tcl folks and the Puppy mavens, Puppy could become a showcase for the power of the Tcl platform, putting the other bloated Linux distributions out there to shame in the process.
--MDD