A free library for Tcl modules

tcllib is a free development tool that enables you to access various packages and modules for the Tcl programming language. This software is technically a collection of utility modules for Tcl that a wide variety of functionality for any type of user. It saves you a lot of time in installing and compiling as you can simply refer to this collection instead of installing them one by one.

All in one place

Tcl is an open-source general-purpose dynamic programming language that was designed to be simple but powerful with commands. As a compact cross-platform application, it’s commonly embedded into C-based software and supports multiple programming paradigms. It’s also often used in both its full form and in several other small-footprint versions. Like other programming languages, however, you’ll need to use modules and standard routines in order to expand its functionality.

You can get this easily enough with tcllib, a Tcl-only library. It contains various modules and packages that all written entirely in Tcl and are quite useful in a broad range of areas. These were designed to be stable standalone packages with little to no binary dependencies. The functions include the ability to implement standard data structures and common networking protocols—and the majority of them are usually commonly-used functions.

Some examples of the modules are encoders, a command-line argument processor, counters for various uses, common math functions, and FTP servers. This distribution also contains CVS modules for BWidgets, tclbench, mclistbox, tclapps, and tklib. Some of the modules even include high-performance implementations written in C. The only issue you may encounter is a package may go missing in-between updates. Plus, beginner programmers will need to be familiar with Tcl before trying to use this.

A must-have collection

All in all, tcllib is a highly-reliable library of tools that Tcl users can benefit from. Not only does it not require compiling, but you can also get a wide variety of common functions from just one source. Plus, it’s highly optimized for C-based applications and can be used as standalone tools. With its extensive documentation, new users can gradually get a grasp of it and even find workarounds for missing package issues.