Starkits are just one way to wrap applications written in Tcl. Others I know of are:
- FreeWrap
- A popular way to wrap everything into a single executable, by Dennis LaBelle - see [1]
- Mktclapp
- This takes the approach that C is the main environment, and embeds Tcl in it, by Richard Hipp - see [2]
- ProWrap
- This is part of the TclPro tool suite (v1 is OSS, v2 is an ActiveState product) - see [3]
FreeWrap is very simple to use and well-documented.
Mktclapp works well when the focus is C, with Tcl/Tk treated as a scripting add-on.
ProWrap has as strong point that it supports wrapping compiled byte codes instead of plain Tcl scripts, which is important in the case of deploying proprietary software.
All the above tools use the ZIP archive format as standard, in a read-only end-of-exe manner. They were designed before the advent of VFS. Note also that there is a ZIP file reader VFS handler in the TclVFS extension.
As of February 2003, the landscape has changed a bit:
- ActiveTcl 8.4.1.0 (Oct 2002) includes the necessary packages to run starkits (TclVFS, Metakit, etc)
- TclDevKit 2.5, i.e. the new ProWrap - due this month - will fully support the generation of starkits
- Scripts compiled with ProComp work fine within a starkit, you just have to include the "tbcload" extension(s) with it
- The most recent versions of SDX and Tclkit support custom icons for Win32 starpack executables