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contents

 

Introduction - 1

Background - 2

Deployment - 3

Starkits - 4

Tclkit - 5

Advanced topics - 6

Repositories - 7

Server apps - 8

Who uses this - 9

Examples - 10

Conclusion - 11

 

Acknowledgements

References

4.6 - Starpacks

A Starpack is a special version of a Starkit that combines a Starkit with a Tclkit runtime into a single file.

Starpacks are standalone executables which run out of the box, making them even easier to distribute and use than Starkits. This convenience does introduce a number of trade-offs:

  • Starpacks only work on the platform for which they have been built
  • Starpacks cannot modify themselves
  • Starpacks must be updated as a whole, and are (much) larger than most Starkits

However Starpacks are more convenient for “consumer” platforms such as Windows and Macintosh - the user only has to download a single file.

And they have one other advantage - since the Tclkit is self-contained there is no risk that the application code will be incompatible with future versions of Tcl/Tk.

Note that the contents of Starpacks can be listed and extracted with the SDX utility, since they use the same packaging mechanism as Starkits. The main difference between a Starpack and a Starkit is that the "header" (i.e. the piece of code that is executed on start-up) is a large binary executable file (the Tcl/Tk interpreter) and the files stored inside its VFS include all the standard Tcl/Tk runtime support files.

see also

Starkit Home Page

Tclkit Home Page

Metakit Home Page

SDX Utility

Wikit Home Page

Tclers' Wiki

Author's Website

Updated paper, by Steve Landers, as presented at Tcl/Tk 2002 conference - see also original PDF.

Papers & Presentations