Tkinspect is a tool to permit one to inspect the contents of a separate running Tk application. It has views for the variables, arrays, procedures and other objects in the inspectee and communicates using the Tk send command.
The application was originally writted by Sam Shen and is now maintained as a module of the tkcon SourceForge project [L1 ] You can obtain the current CVS working files by executing
cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/tkcon login cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/tkcon co tkinspect
The current file release (October 2002) is 5.1.6p9 which incorporates support for use under windows (using dde or comm instead of send ), support for incr Tcl 3.2 and a number of bug fixes.
Some people have found having to get tkinspect via cvs to be more difficult than they prefer. For these people as well as for those who are used to using tclkit, a Starkit version of tkinspect is available at http://mini.net/sdarchive/tkinspect.kit .
Bug reports, patches and feature requests should all be submitted to the tkcon project tracker please [L2 ].
History
Tkinspect [L3 ] has quite a history in the Tcl/Tk environment. Created by Sam Shen, tkinspect provides the ability to examine and modify the procs and variables of any Tcl/Tk application with a working "send" command.
Later, Sam moved on and a few other people have since made modifications. John Robert LoVerso [L4 ] modified tkinspect so that it used comm instead of send. This allowed one to run tkinspect under any operating system which supports sockets.
Paul Healy then wrote a patch so that tkinspect knows about Tcl 8 namespaces [L5 ].
Tako Schotanus wrote a patch for TkInspect so it worked with incr Tcl [L6 ].
Pat Thoyts integrated the above patches and is now maintaining the code at SourceForge.
Mike Clarkson overhauled its GUI and included it in TixApps.
Current version of Tkinspect:
What: tkinspect (Thoyts)
Where: http://tkcon.sf.net/
http://prdownloads.sf.net/tkcon/tkinspect-5.1.6p8.bin
http://tkcon.sourceforge.net/tkinspect/
Description: Allow browsing/inspection of running Tk applications.
Based on Tkinspect 5.1.6, with patches from various people over
the years so that incr tcl is supported, comm communications is
supproted, etc.
This version works with Tk 8.3 or better.
Note that a Tclkit based Scripted document of tkinspect is available
- see the prdownloads url above.
Currently considered version 5.1.6p8 .
Updated: 05/2002
Contact: See the web siteOlder versions of Tkinspect
What: tkinspect (LoVerso)
Where: http://www.schooner.com/%7Eloverso/tcl-tk/
Description: Modified version of tkinspect so that it uses comm. This allows
tkinspect to run under Windows. tkinspect-lite contains just
the pieces of tkinspect-full that differ from the authority version
of tkinspect.
Updated: 12/1998
Contact: mailto:[email protected] (John Robert LoVerso)
What: tkinspect (Shen)
Where: ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-7.6/devel/tkinspect-5.1.6.tar.gz
http://huizen.dds.nl/%7Equintess/pub/tkinspect_itcl.patch.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.procplace.com/pub/tcl/sorted/packages-7.6/devel/tkinspect-5.1.6p3.patch.tar.gz
Description: Allow browsing/inspection of running Tk applications.
This version works with Tk 4.0b4 or better.
Paul Healy has written a patch to v5.1.6 so that it is compatible
with Tk 8, with introspection for Tcl 8 namespaces.
Updated: 12/1997
Contact: mailto:[email protected] (Sam Shen)
mailto:[email protected] (Sam Shen)
mailto:[email protected] (Paul Healy)
Discussion about generalising the send command moved to Transport independent send
The Tcl Dev Kit provides an enhanced version of TkInspect.
Perhaps some of these enhancements might get submitted back the the tkinspect project? (hint hint) -PT