Or '''STAN''' for short is my attempt at a package installer and auto downloader. 

   * '''S'''imple: If you want install a package, a single command (GUI to come) will do it for you.
   * Simple: If you want to start your own archive, all you need is a webserver and some files.
   * '''T'''cl: It should work with Pure-Tcl 8.3+
   * '''A'''rchive: Lots of packages available (about 20, for now)
   * '''N'''etwork: Archives point to each other. Forming a network where each publisher can maintain their own library of binaries and pure tcl software.

Once stan is installed you can just:

 stantool install somepackage

To install ''somepackage''. 

The current library holds a few packages already, namely stan, snack (windows/linux-i386/macosx), zlib (windows/linux-i386) and dict (windows/linux-i386). Additionally, a secondary (linked!) archive lists all the [cantcl] packages. Not all cantcl packages will install at the moment (because pkg_mkIndex doesn't work for them!).

'''-- 10Sept2004 [PS]''' 

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'''Getting stan'''

The simplest way to get started is to fetch the stantool.kit from [http://pascal.scheffers.net/stan/stantool.kit]. Alternatively, you can directly download http://pascal.scheffers.net/stan/stan/stan-0.9.tar.gz and http://pascal.scheffers.net/stan/stantool.tcl.txt. Stantool.tcl.txt requires that the package stan is already installed, whereas the kit is bundled with package stan. For the curious, take a peek at the directory listing too [http://pascal.scheffers.net/stan/].

Listing available packages:
 $ tclkit stantool.kit list
This will show all packages (supported by your platform!)

Installing:
 # tclkit stantool.kit install -libdir /usr/lib zlib 
Will install zlib in /usr/lib/zlib-1.1

Getting some help:
 $ tclkit stantool.kit

If you use stantool outside tclkit, you will not have zlib available (Trf and the others are not supported yet). On unix platforms, this is not a big deal, as stan will try to use gzip, bzip2 and unzip. On windows you should really make your first stan command:

 c:\>tclsh stantool.tcl.txt install -libdir c:\tcl\lib zlib

Otherwise most packages will fail to install.
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[LV] Great step forward!
Question 1: when I do a stantool.kit list on my machine, I see two copies of vfs listed;
however, there is no obvious difference between the two (the versions are the same).
Also, it would really be helpful if the name column was as close to the commonly used name
as possible - I see something listed as "soap" and "vfs" - are these really [tclsoap] and [tclvfs]?
Question 2: is work proceeding to get cantcl and stan working better together?
Question 3: does stan currently support the tcl module tip?

[PS] these are probably slightly inaccurate names from cantcl. Only the first four packges are mine, the rest are cantcl! And only by seeing the stan output, I saw my dict an zlib is also amis. vfs is actually tclvfs and soap I don't know. I don't know why you see two copies of vfs, but the display of that package list is very rudementary and doesn't do anything fancy, like [lsort]... On my way home I though of another deficiency - the tclkit version doesn't know the lib-path of the ordinary tclsh installed and therefore also does not know which packages it has installed. This is just the start, I hope. A GUI is one if the other things I have on my shopping list.

I have not talked to Steve C about cantcl, but I see stan and cantcl as highly complementary - so I'd like them to work together as well as possible. Q3:  You mean TIP#55? Yes. A work in progress. Try installing 'la', from cantcl. 

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[jmn] On my platform; FreeBSD, I just see:

 Available packages:
         Name Version Installed Title

with no indication that it's either found none, or still searching..   
I assume that's just because there's nothing for this platform, but in the general case of searches with no results, is there a more satisfying "not found" type response?

Also - have you considered implementing some sort of license filter? For me it's an important consideration when browsing for software, and it's a pain to have to download & install/extract a package to see how it's licensed.

[ps] 1. Odd, it should at least list the pure tcl packages. I'll Check can you post an [array get ::tcl_platform] for me? 2. No - good point. Cantcl has license info, my packages do not - I'll add the info. STAN itself is licensed under the same license as Tcl.

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[Category Application]
[Category Deployment]