[Steve Cassidy] is working on [Tclish] as the basis a of Tcl extension installer.  As a part of that, he has created [TIP] 55 to discuss a format for code that gets installed.  As an outgrowth of this, Steve created http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/~steve/cgi-bin/cantcl.cgi as a CGI interface to an extension repository.

The code behind the CGI script is from my installer library discussed in [Tcl Based Installers]. Some procs are specific to supporting TIP55 style packages:

   installer::parse_description file   -- parse a DESCRIPTION.txt file
   installer::validate_package dir     -- is this package TIP55 legal?
   installer::pkginfo zipfile fields   -- return some fields from a DESCRIPTION.txt file inside this zipfile
   installer::index_directory dir ?fields? -- return a list of package and thier info from the zipfiles in dir

CANTCL seems to derive from Mac Cody: [http://groups.google.com/groups?q=CANTCL&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=3&selm=3B12AE9D.65A2BADC%40home.com]
Comprehensive Archive Network for TCL.

Related pages: [ETEN], [STEP] ([SEE], [WOBBLE]) [Tcl Repository Wish List].

[davidw] - why not write the description file in Tcl?  Tcl already has a parser:-)

My motivation was to make the syntax _simpler_ than having it in tcl, the 'parser' for the rfc format is only a few lines of code anyway.  CF:

  Identity: mypackage
  Version: 1.0.0

with 

  set pkginfo(identity) {mypackage}
  set pkginfo(version)  {1.0.0}

I'm also concerned about sourcing tcl files even with the checks and controls around tcl safe interpreters.  I don't want to entertain the possibility of someone exploiting a safe-tcl bug by uploading a rogue package.