TCL development: debug environment

Question

I like a bit of TiVo hacking in spare time - TiVo uses a Linux variant and TCL. I'd like to write TCL scripts on my Windows laptop, test them and then FTP them over to my TiVo.

Can I have a recommendation for a TCL debugging environment for Windows, please?

[Building Tcl/Tk with Mingw](http://wiki.tcl.tk/14828) – denis phillips Aug 20 '08 at 16:50 — denis phillips, Aug 20 '08 at 16:50

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 23 '08 at 17:09

4

Komodo from Activestate is a good IDE for Windows/Linux. There is a trial version - I am not sure if there is a free version after trial though.

answered Aug 23 '08 at 17:09

Abhinav

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Komodo is a nice IDE for Mac/Linux/Win. Works great with Tcl. I've been using it for a few years now. – daustin777 Mar 05 '09 at 15:41

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 16 '08 at 22:50

2

I'm not sure that you need a debugging environment as such. Just grab the binary release from ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com/Products/activetcl/index.mhtml) and run your scripts from the command prompt (C:/blahblah/tclsh myprog.tcl) and see what it spits out.

I'd advise against building it from source because it doesn't really gain you anything.

answered Sep 16 '08 at 22:50

Toby

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printf (er, puts) debugging is no substitute for a good debugger. – Dana Robinson Jan 06 '09 at 02:06

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 21 '10 at 18:49

This wiki page discusses tools for developing and debugging in Tcl. In particular, I've been enamoured with tkinspect (mentioned on that wiki page with its own page elsewhere on the wiki) which allows one in a linux or other unix x environment to interact with a running tk application to attempt to do some debugging. Of course, ActiveState's commercial product "tcl dev kit" has a debugger. There are other debuggers - free and not so free - discussed on the wiki as well.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 29 '11 at 23:12

1

There is now a Tcl plugin for Netbeans, which has a debugging feature. Here are some screenshots: http://wiki.tcl.tk/28657

answered Aug 29 '11 at 23:12

vanje

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score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 25 '11 at 22:00

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If you are looking for a Debugger with editing possibilities, RamDebugger is also a nice tool.

edited Sep 25 '11 at 22:00

sjngm

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answered Sep 24 '11 at 21:22

joheid

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 05 '09 at 18:29

0

ActiveState has a Tcl development kit (not free, but cheap) that I've used in the past. It even worked with our embedded tcl interpreter.

http://www.activestate.com/tcl_dev_kit/

answered Jan 05 '09 at 18:29

Dana Robinson

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 23 '09 at 01:54

I've found this breakpoint setter from the Tcl wiki (from Richard Suchenwirth) to be handy. Once the interpreter sees a call to this, say "bp beforehairyfunction", it pauses and gives you a tclsh prompt.

proc bp {{s {}}} {
        if ![info exists ::bp_skip] {
           set ::bp_skip [list]
        } elseif {[lsearch -exact $::bp_skip $s]>=0} return
    if [catch {info level -1} who] {set who ::}
    while 1 {
        puts -nonewline "$who/$s> "; flush stdout
        gets stdin line
        if {$line=="c"} {puts "continuing.."; break}
        if {$line=="i"} {set line "info locals"}
        catch {uplevel 1 $line} res
        puts $res
    }
 }

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered May 04 '23 at 12:41

Tcl Dev Kit (TDK) contains a debugger, which you can try. Since 2018 it is open source (BSD-3 license) and can be downloaded from github:

https://github.com/ActiveState/tdk

The previous paid version was easy to install on Windows, the open source version is without setup.

TCL development: debug environment

8 Answers8