To install a piece of software is the process of getting it into a system in a way that it will operate appropriately.
Some software has simple installation requirements - tclkit for instance needs only be present in a directory that will be searched when you invoke it.
Other software requires a bit more work - while some software requires quite a lot of work to get installed.
Many times, software comes with instructions regarding installation.
If a particular piece of software does not come with such instructions, then one can either contact the author or other maintainers asking for assistance, or one can contact a web forum or usenet group which has a background familar with your computer operating system (or sometimes with the language being used in the application - or even sometimes a web forum specifically for the software package!) where one can ask for help.
RS: Self-contained scripts [we need a wiki page for what this phrase means and techniques to accomplish it] also need no installation, if they do exec magic for Unix, and a regular Tcl installation (with .tcl association, etc.) is present on Windows. In place of delivering separate icon files, they may be put in the script as base64 encoded data, and loaded as such.
Stu: Jan 4, 2004 Here's a mini installer for single-file tcl scripts using exec magic. An interesting side-effect is that an installed program can still be used to install again. I've improved it a bit and it is now known as SIFT.
#! /bin/sh
#########################################################################################
# \
if [ "$1" == "--help" ] ; then
# \
echo "Run without options to run normally, or install with:"
# \
echo " --install src dest user group mode path-to-tclsh"
# \
echo "Do it like that, the installer is dumb."
# \
echo -n "Example: ./myapp.tcl --install ./myapp.tcl"
# \
echo " /usr/local/bin/myapp root bin 555 /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4"
# \
exit
# \
elif [ "$1" == "--install" ] ; then
# \
echo "Installing ($2) to ($3), user($4) group($5) mode($6) path-to-tclsh($7)"
# \
sed -e "19,39s!/usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4!$7!" < "$2" > "$3" && \
# \
chown "$4":"$5" "$3" && \
# \
chmod "$6" "$3"
# \
exit
# \
else
# \
if [ -x /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4 ]
# \
then exec /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4 "$0" ${1+"$@"}
# \
else exec tclsh "$0" ${1+"$@"}
# \
fi
# \
fi
# \
#########################################################################################