HJG : PortableApps is a collection of software that can be installed on an USBstick (see USB Portable Environment ). E.g. there are portable versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Filezilla, GIMP, Pidgin, Virtualdub ...
So, "Portable" in the sense that such software can be carried around, plugged into any computer and used there without needing to install it there.
Right now, this is just for windows. Even if a lot of those applications are also available for Linux or Mac, there is no "portable" equivalent yet.
All those programs put everything necessary for running them into their own directory, so they can be installed and uninstalled independantly at any time. Side effect: lots of space wasted for duplicates of common files like dlls.
There is a specification for the format of the file- and directory-layout, as well as operating behavior of portable apps, and its installer.
This is sort of an obstacle, because it prevents 'native portable' programs (i.e. software that can be copied somewhere, and run from there) from being included in, and distributed with the portableapps-collection. Note that this is true also for 'plain' starkits etc.
portableapps.com is gaining much popularity, and more apps rapidly. There are similar websites for such portable software, e.g. Lupo PenSuite or Portable Freeware Collection .
It would be nice for tcl to be present at PortableApps, to raise awareness for a broader group of people, say with some of the games for a start.
My idea would be to have a tcl-menu, that gets started from the portableapps-menue, that presents the included tcl-applications (sort of like the tcl-demo). All this could be wrapped into a tclkit or starpack.
Some of the programs that I think should be included:
Of course, the help-text for the tcl-menu would include some info on tcl, as well as links to all the relevant websites.
See also: