Compilation on Unix

There are several different flavors of Un*x out there in this small world. A configure script, as generated by GNU autoconf, is provided to handle them all together.

• Simply type:

  • configure
  • make

  The makefile will then check number and names of the files in the package, generate dependency information, compile them and at last build the library.

• In contrast to earlier versions the system will build a shared library by default. Give option --disable-shared to configure if this is not desired.
• To check the extension, type make test or make check. This will build a tclsh containing just tcl and giot, and then runs some test-scripts checking the behaviour of the created library.
• At last type make install to install the generated library and the exported header. This installation conforms to the rules set by the package loader mechanism of the tcl-core.

You do have a non-standard setup (tcl not installed below /usr/local) ?

Don't fret, there are some tuning options for configure to help you.

• The configure script searches the core header tcl.h in the following places:

  1. $(TCL_INCLUDE_DIR)
  2. ../../tcl8.2*/generic
  3. ../../tcl8.1*/generic
  4. ../../tcl8.0*/generic
  5. ../../tcl/generic
  6. ../../tcl
  7. $(prefix)
  8. /usr/local/include
  9. /usr/include

  By default $(TCL_INCLUDE_DIR) is empty and $(prefix) points to the location of an installed 'tclsh' or is /usr/local if tclsh could not be found via $PATH.

  There are three options to override these defaults:

  --prefix=DIR	$(prefix)=DIR
  --with-tcl=DIR	$(TCL_INCLUDE_DIR)=DIR/include
  --with-tcl-include-dir=DIR	$(TCL_INCLUDE_DIR)=DIR

• To find libtcl.a (or libtcl.so.??) the paths

  1. $(TCL_LIB_DIR)
  2. ../../tcl8.2*/unix
  3. ../../tcl8.1*/unix
  4. ../../tcl8.0*/unix
  5. ../../tcl/unix
  6. ../../tcl
  7. $(exec_prefix)
  8. /usr/local/include
  9. /usr/include

  are searched. $(TCL_LIB_DIR) is empty by default, but can be set via

  --with-tcl=DIR	$(TCL_LIB_DIR)=DIR/lib
  --with-tcl-lib-dir=DIR	$(TCL_LIB_DIR)=DIR

  $(exec_prefix) contains the same value as $(prefix) by default, but can be set explicitly via --exec-prefix.