On Windows tclkit is provided as two executables. One (tclkit) is a GUI mode program and the other (tclkitsh) is a console mode program. To build starkits yourself you should fetch both executables along with the sdx.kit starpack.
sdx should be run using the console mode executable. A simple way to handle this is to create a simple batch file to handle this, for instance sdx.bat can be just:
@tclkitsh c:\path\to\sdx.kit %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
To illustrate the usage, lets create a trivial "Hello, World" program:
mkdir hello.vfs
echo package require Tk > hello.vfs\hello.tcl
echo tk_messageBox -message "Hello, World" >> hello.vfs\hello.tcl
echo exit >> hello.vfs\hello.tcl
echo package require starkit > hello.vfs\main.tcl
echo if {[starkit::startup] ne "sourced"} { source [file join $starkit::topdir hello.tcl] } >> hello.vfs\main.tclThis gives us a vfs directory with two files. The application file and the starkit intialization script. We can test the application in place very simply:
tclkit hello.vfs\main.tcl
and we can wrap it into a platform-independent starkit:
sdx wrap hello.kit tclkit hello.kit
or create a standalone executable, a starpack:
sdx wrap hello.exe -runtime c:\path\to\tclkit.exe hello.exe
If your application is to be a console mode application then use tclkitsh instead of tclkit as the executable and be aware that you cannot pass the same executable as the argument for -runtime as you are running. You need to make a copy and pass that (a restriction caused by the way Windows locks running executable files).
December 20, 2002
If you use Windows \ notation for a filename, SDX fails.
If you try to add registered methods to the .KIT filetype (wrap, unwrap etc) then when you right-click on the filename and choose the method, SDX fails. This appears to be fixed for the *first* filename but not for the second. That is, tclkitsh can find sdx.kit, but tclkitsh with SDX can't find your file. It creates an empty correctly-named .vfs folder and aborts.
When I massaged the filename the problem went away:
file unwrap.tcl
set aa [lindex $argv 0]
set aa [string map {\\ /} $aa]
exec tclkitsh.exe sdx.kit unwrap $aaI registered this as "<path>tclkitsh <path>unwrap.tcl %1" and it worked for me on Windows XP and Windows 98.
It might be possible to fix this inside SDX assuming that you'll never need a unix backslash character in a filename. I'm not sure that's a good idea.
Jonah Thomas
ZipGuy 06-06-2003 -
I have created a Starkit to solve this problem on Windows. It's called Windows SDX Shell Fix and it front-ends sdx.kit.
LV 2007 July 11
Here's what I see as I am attempting to survive my first dealings with starkits under Windows (shudder). No questions yet ... just wanted other first timers to see what to expect. Hopefully the experts will wander by and add useful tips for us here.
I have a tclkit.exe, a starkit (tls.kit), and sdx.kit.
I open a cmd.exe window and I type:
sdx.kit lsk tls.kit
Initially, I get a dialog from windows saying it doesn't know how to deal with a .kit file. I point it to the tclkit.exe. I then type the command again.
This time, I get a tkcon console, as well as a widget that is titled "sdx" with a label of "Command line:".
I type "help", and the sdx help output appears in the console. But the command line dialog is gone. Okay, that's how things work on Unix...
So, I quit the tkcon, and type the command again. I see that the arguments are doing me no good in cmd.exe, so I type just the arguments into the sdx command line window. That seems to work.
AsifH 26-07-2007
I got the latest http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/8.5a6/tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe (WinXP) and http://www.equi4.com/pub/sk/sdx.kit
I created a simple helloWorld.tcl file containing:
puts "Hello World!"
I generated a helloWorld.kit by executing:
tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe sdx.kit qwrap helloWorld.tcl
I built the vfs directory helloWorld.vfs:
tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe sdx.kit unwrap helloWorld.kit
I built helloWorld.exe by executing:
tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe sdx.kit wrap helloWorld.exe -runtime tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe
When I execute helloWorld.exe, I get:
./helloWorld.exe: ./helloWorld.exe: cannot execute binary file
So I:
cp tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe tclkitsh-win32-runtime.upx.exe
then I build helloWorld.exe once again:
tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe sdx.kit wrap helloWorld.exe -runtime tclkitsh-win32-runtime.upx.exe
Now I execute helloWorld.exe and I get the expected result:
Hello World!
Why do I need to copy tclkitsh-win32.upx.exe to a different filename (for example) tclkitsh-win32-runtime.upx.exe in order for this to work?
LV One of the documented restrictions for sdx is that you must provide a physically seperate file as -runtime argument from the file involved in running the sdx. I read somewhere it had to do with OS limitations in using files that were being executed. I never saw an extended explanation, but certainly you have provided an example of the problem.
See [L1 ] for a thread from March 2008 on the starkit mailing, discussing changing the Windows icon and other resources in a starpack. list about
During October, 2008, PT answers a comp.lang.tcl poster's question about how to set a starpack's file description, etc. He says:
You can create a tclkit.inf file in the root of your vfs tree and the sdx utility will read this and modify the string version resources. For instance, tkchat uses: CompanyName "Pat Thoyts" LegalCopyright "Copyright (c) 2001-2008 Bruce Hartweg et al." FileDescription "Jabber multi-user chat client" ProductName "tkchat" ProductVersion "2.0.0.0"