This page considers what software should be put in front of newcomers to the language.
Differs for different platforms - as well as for different interests.
Many/most of these are in ActiveTcl - however, not all platforms are supported by Activestate.
[ ActiveTcl, TclKit, Kitten, SmallTcl, ...]
See also Apple Macintosh and Tcl/Tk, as well as Compiling Tcl on a Mac and Macintosh specific Tcl commands.
See also Microsoft Windows and Tk, Building Tcl DLL's for Windows, Windows/CE, Microsoft Windows and Tcl, Windows specific Tcl commands, Windows Registry Browser, etc.
"Is there anything I should know before I start coding"
JCW - a plea: please also consider making some zlib implementation interface "standard" - its absence is preventing several valuable uses (mounting a ZIP with TclVFS, for example)
LV Sounds like a need for a TIP, doesn't it? The problem is that we either have to include the zlib library code in the Tcl distribution, or we have to point people to where to get it and work out the difficulties of building it on each platform that supports Tcl.
DGP The value of zlib seems overstated to me too. It doesn't really make anything new possible. It just makes some disk files smaller. Big whoop.
escargo 26 Nov 2002 - I'm not sure if it fits in above or not, but configuration control using CVS [L1 ], should be considered. First, TkCVS [L2 ] interfaces to it. Second, there is the issue of putting appropriate tags in tcl source files. Some samples of the code that reside on this Wiki use CVS tags in creative ways (look at that package provide statement in Menus Even Easier Redux and the set RCSID in Text variable for text widget).
Is there a set of best practices for using CVS with Tcl that gets the best use out of CVS?