What is involved in creating a CD-ROM containing runnable Tcl/Tk scripts

Purpose: gathering place of ideas, pointers, concepts, and wishlists on the topic of creating CD-ROMs from which one can run Tcl/Tk scripts directly.


What are the challenges?

  • Cross Platform issues
  1. Attempt, as much as possible, to seperate your application and data into platform specific and generic, gaining the most reuse as possible.
  2. Determine the hardware and software platforms for which binaries will be needed. This will determine how many binary Tcl interpreters you will need. Consider TclKit as a baseline for the interpreter.
  3. Determine the file naming restrictions / conventions that need to be imposed so that the applications can all access the generic data.
  4. Determine the CD-ROM file format standard to use so that all platforms can access the appropriate programs and executables.
  5. Determine whether you are going to provide support for the user to install the software and/or data on one or more local disks.
  • Platform specific issues - Windows
  1. you'll need to run the Tcl installation script with your wish executable without messing with the user's file associations. A BAT file will probably be your best bet. Be sure you test with the CD-ROM under different drive letters! If you're using a tclkit as the executable you won't have to install anything

... add in other issues as they occur to people...


There is a CD called Expert Tcl that boots into Linux on any x86 box with 16 meg of ram and uses tclkit to demo many tcl/tk applications and scripts.

See: http://www.superant.com/


LV Nov 22, 2006 - here's a pointer to an article [L1 ] that is NOT tcl specific, but discusses a unix script that helps you prepare a CD-ROM image that has filenaming that works for both windows and unix.