[Richard Suchenwirth] 2002-10-30 - A wish that comes up every now and then (see [Persistent Tcl and Tk applications]) is to dump the state of an interpreter to a file, so it can later be restored (by [source]ing the resulting file) with the same settings. Here's a simple first shot that "serializes" global variables (scalar or array), interpreter aliases, and procedures, taking care to skip ''env'' and Tcl internals. Feel free to improve on this ;-)

As mentioned on comp.lang.tcl, this is '''not''' a complete state dump; just a reasonable facimile.  Things like open file descriptors, sockets, etc. are
particularly difficult to handle, as are various extension specific items.

Richard, what about namespaces and package requires? - [RS]: Packages are sort of taken care of in the revised code below; namespaces would require traversal of the namespace tree, repeating variable and proc dumping.

[AK]:
Note that tkcon contains dump routines as well, for namespaces too. - [RS]: Sure - it's just the little mental challenge of building something "with your bare hands"... more fun for a short break than reading yet more documentation or source code ;-)

----
 proc interp'dump {} {
     set res "\# interpreter status dump\n"
     catch {package require "a non-existing one"}
     foreach package [lsort [package names]] {
	 if {![catch {package present $package} version]} {
	     append res "package require $package $version" \n
	 }
     }
     foreach i [lsort [info globals]] {
	 if {$i == "env"} continue  ;# don't dump environment..
	 if {[string match tcl_* $i]} continue ;# ..or Tcl system vars
	 if {[string match auto_index $i]} continue ;# ..or Tcl system vars
	 if {[array exists ::$i]} {
	     append res [list array set $i [array get ::$i]]\n
	 } else {
	     append res [list set $i [set ::$i]]\n
	 }
     }
     foreach proc [lsort [info procs]] {
	 if {[string match auto_* $proc] || $proc == "unknown"} {
	     continue ;# prevents most of the init.tcl procs from dumping
	 }
	 if {[string match pkg_* $proc]} continue ;# ..or Tcl system vars
	 if {[string match tcl* $proc]} continue ;# ..or Tcl system vars
	 append res "proc [list $proc] {"
	 set space ""
	 foreach i [info args $proc] {
	     if [info default $proc $i value] {
		 append res "$space{$i [list $value]}"
	     } else {
		 append res "$space$i"
	     }
	     set space " "
	 }
	 append res "} {[info body $proc]}\n"
     }
     foreach alias [lsort [interp aliases {}]] {
	 append res "interp alias {} $alias {} [interp alias {} $alias]\n"
     }
     set res
 }
 if {[file tail [info script]] == [file tail $argv0]} {
    # prepare some playing material
    set scalar hello
    array set arry {foo 1 bar 2 grill 3}
    proc foo {bar} {puts grill-$bar}
    interp alias {} print {} puts stdout
    puts [interp'dump]
 }
----
Smalltalk provides a mechanismus for dumping state as so called image. Smalltalk images contains all global variables, classes und compiled methods. The image is the internal (byte-coded) state of interpreter.

The example below try rather to create one big Tcl-script. (What is this new created procs, tcl is dynamic)

I think more about dumping internal state (binary) and than loading it.
Loading byte code should be also much more faster the compile all sources new.
Tcl Interpreter could realize such function if it could serialize Tcl_Obj (internal Tcl) but I think the concept of Tcl interpreter do not allow it (or nobody have thought about it). The biggest problem are the Tcl extensions.
All Tcl extensions should then also could serialize their states. 
In priciple if in tcl were everything string it can be easy. If fact often are this strings names of handlers (file handler, tk windows). Is is not so ease to difference what is to dump and what should be recreate.

I think TclPro have ability to save byte-coded procedures but I do not know how it could be used for such dumping.
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[Arts and crafts of Tcl-Tk programming]