ZDNet: Tcl Counselor 2: TclKit Solves Problems

“The challenges I face often have to do with configuration and
deployment. Debuggers, editors, and other components of
conventional “integrated development environments” don’t impassion
me the same way; a future installment of “Tcl Counselor” will look
at those. Code-slinging programming and debugging rarely
occupies much of my time, even though those are the fun tasks. The
biggest puzzles I face typically involve working out details of how
to install and maintain hundreds of desktop application instances,
or how to co-ordinate development by a distributed team of
engineers. This is where TclKit comes in handiest.“

“Think of the normal course of development of a Tcl application:
you quickly put together a nice working model expressed as several
source code files, plus a few compiled-object extensions, a
configuration file or two, and perhaps a database backend. It works
flawlessly! You’re a success! Now, how do you get it to do the same
on any host other than your development workstation?”

“The traditional answer is with an installation procedure that
takes responsibility for locating a usable version of the Tcl
interpreter (which itself requires that at least three, and
possibly many more, files be in place), situating all source files
and configuration specifications where they’ll be found, and
spinning up a database or other services.”

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