Tobe
Tcl as One Big Executable

This page was last modified on 2001/02/10 23:10:54 GMT
The latest Tobe version is created on 2000/10/30 20:52:00 GMT

Introduction

Tobe is a quick and easy way to bundle the Tcl/Tk interpreter, several popular Tcl extensions, and an arbitrary collection of Tcl scripts together into a single standalone executable. Here is a partial feature list:

• A statically-linked standalone executable: no external DLLs or shared libraries required.
• Includes popular Tcl extensions:
  • BLT
  • Img
  • TkHtml
  • TkTable
  • TLink (windows only)
  • SQLite
  • Winico (windows only)
  • ZVFS
• Tcl scripts are attached to the executable as a ZIP archive. Use any ZIP archiver program (ex: pkzip) to add, remove, or modify scripts.
• Windows versions built using the mingw32 cross-compiler hosted on Linux.

Current Status

A change history is available online.

Tobe and this website are currently in development and are incomplete. Check back later for more up-to-date information.

Contributed Patches

Dave Bodenstab contributed some patches that fix some problems and add some features. I will attempt to incorporate those patches in main distribution when I get a chance. For now, you can download them and try them yourself. patch1.tar.gz Thanks, Dave.

Download

Source code to Tobe is available for download below. Precompiled binaries are not currently available. The source code does not includes the sources to Tcl/Tk or the larger extensions. But the ZVFS, Winico, and TLink sources are included.

• tobe.tar.gz (36955 bytes)

Links

• Mktclapp is a program that helps mix C or C++ together with Tcl/Tk to build a standalone executable.

• FreeWrap by Dennis Labelle is another program that can be used to turn Tcl/Tk scripts into standalone executables. Dennis also makes available the freeDelivery installer program based on freeWrap.

• The idea of using a ZIP archiver to attach scripts to an executable is due to Jan Nijtmans. Jan makes available a program called "wrap" that works very much like Tobe. Some of the code in the ZVFS of Tobe is based on Jan's wrap program.

• Additional information about Tcl/Tk is available at http://dev.scriptics.com/

• Information about the BLT extension is available at http://www.tcltk.com/blt/

• Information about the Img extension is available at http://members1.chello.nl/~j.nijtmans/img.html

• Information about the SQLite extension is available at http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/tclsqlite.html

• Information about the TkHtml extension is available at http://www.hwaci.com/sw/tkhtml/

• Information about the TkTable extension is available at http://www.hobbs.wservice.com/tcl/capp/

• Information about the TLink extension is available at http://www.sensus.org/tcl/

• Information about the ZVFS extension is available at http://www.hwaci.com/sw/tobe/zvfs.html

More Open Source Software from Hwaci.