tcllib_install_guide - Tcllib - The Installer's Guide
Welcome to Tcllib, the Tcl Standard Library. Note that Tcllib is not a package itself. It is a collection of (semi-independent) Tcl packages that provide utility functions useful to a large collection of Tcl programmers.
The audience of this document is anyone wishing to build and install the packages found in Tcllib, for either themselves, or others.
For developers intending to work on the packages themselves we additionally provide
Please read Tcllib - How To Get The Sources first, if that was not done already. Here we assume that the sources are already available in a directory of your choice.
Before Tcllib can be build and used a number of requisites must be installed. These are:
The scripting language Tcl. For details see Tcl.
Optionally, the critcl package (C embedding) for Tcl. For details see CriTcl.
This list assumes that the machine where Tcllib is to be installed is essentially clean. Of course, if parts of the dependencies listed below are already installed the associated steps can be skipped. It is still recommended to read their sections though, to validate that the dependencies they talk about are indeed installed.
As we are installing a number of Tcl packages and applications it should be pretty much obvious that a working installation of Tcl itself is needed, and I will not belabor the point.
Out of the many possibilities use whatever you are comfortable with, as long as it provides at the very least Tcl 8.2, or higher. This may be a Tcl installation provided by your operating system distribution, from a distribution-independent vendor, or built by yourself.
Note that the packages in Tcllib have begun to require 8.4, 8.5, and even 8.6. Older versions of Tcl will not be able to use such packages. Trying to use them will result in package not found errors, as their package index files will not register them in versions of the core unable to use them.
Myself, I used (and still use) ActiveState's ActiveTcl 8.5 distribution during development, as I am most familiar with it.
(Disclosure: I, Andreas Kupries, worked for ActiveState until 2016, maintaining ActiveTcl and TclDevKit for them).. I am currently working for SUSE Software Canada ULC, although not in Tcl-related areas.
This distribution can be found at http://www.activestate.com/activetcl. Retrieve the archive of ActiveTcl 8.5 (or higher) for your platform and install it as directed by ActiveState.
For those wishing to build and install Tcl on their own, the relevant sources can be found at
together with the necessary instructions on how to build it.
If there are problems with building, installing, or using Tcl, please file a ticket against Tcl, or the vendor of your distribution, and not Tcllib.
The critcl tool is an optional dependency.
It is only required when trying to build the C-based accelerators for a number of packages, as explained in Critcl & Accelerators
Tcllib's build system looks for it in the , using the name critcl. This is for Unix. On Windows on the other hand the search is more complex. First we look for a proper application critcl.exe. When that is not found we look for a combination of interpreter (tclkitsh.exe, tclsh.exe) and starkit (critcl.kit, critcl) instead. Note that the choice of starkit can be overriden via the environment variable .
Tcllib requires Critcl version 2 or higher.
The github repository providing releases of version 2 and higher, and the associated sources, can be found at https://andreas-kupries.github.io/critcl.
Any branch of the repository can be used (if not using the prebuild starkit or starpack), although the use of the stable branch master is recommended.
At the above url is also an explanation on how to build and install Critcl, including a list of its dependencies.
Its instructions will not be repeated here. If there are problems with these directions please file a ticket against the Critcl project, and not Tcllib.
As Tcllib is mainly a bundle of packages written in pure Tcl building it is the same as installing it. The exceptions to this have their own subsection, Critcl & Accelerators, later on.
Before that however comes the standard case, differentiated by the platforms with material differences in the instruction, i.e. Unix-like, versus Windows.
Regarding the latter it should also be noted that it is possible set up an Unix-like environment using projects like MSYS, Cygwin, and others. In that case the user has the choice of which instructions to follow.
Regardless of environment or platform, a suitable Tcl has to be installed, and its tclsh should be placed on the (Unix) or associated with ".tcl" files (Windows).
For Unix-like environments Tcllib comes with the standard set of files to make
./configure make install
a suitable way of installing it. This is a standard non-interactive install automatically figuring out where to place everything, i.e. packages, applications, and the manpages.
To get a graphical installer invoke
./installer.tcl
instead.
In a Windows environment we have the installer.tcl script to perform installation.
If the desired tclsh is associated ".tcl" files then double-clicking / opening the installer.tcl is enough to invoke it in graphical mode. This assumes that Tk is installed and available as well.
Without Tk the only way to invoke the installer are to open a DOS window, i.e. cmd.exe, and then to invoke
./installer.tcl
inside it.
While the majority of Tcllib consists of packages written in pure Tcl a number of packages also have accelerators associated with them. These are critcl-based C packages whose use will boost the performance of the packages using them. These accelerators are optional, and they are not built by default. If they are built according to the instructions below then they will also be installed as well.
To build the accelerators the normally optional dependency on critcl becomes required.
To build and install Tcllib with the accelerators in a Unix-like environment invoke:
./configure
make critcl # Builds the shared library and package holding
# the accelerators, tcllibc
make install # Installs all packages, including the new tcllibc.
The underlying tool is "sak.tcl" in the toplevel directory of Tcllib and the command make critcl is just a wrapper around
./sak.tcl critcl
Therefore in a Windows environment instead invoke
./sak.tcl critcl ./installer.tcl
from within a DOS window, i.e. cmd.exe.
The core of Tcllib's build system is the script "installer.tcl" found in the toplevel directory of a checkout or release.
The
configure ; make install
setup available to developers on Unix-like systems is just a wrapper around it. To go beyond the standard embodied in the wrapper it is necessary to directly invoke this script.
On Windows system using it directly is the only way to invoke it.
For basic help invoke it as
./installer.tcl -help
This will print a short list of all the available options to the standard output channel.
The commands associated with the various install targets in the Makefile.in for Unix can be used as additional examples on how to use this tool as well.
The installer can operate in GUI and CLI modes. By default it chooses the mode automatically, based on if the Tcl package Tk can be used or not. The option -no-gui can be used to force CLI mode.
Note that it is possible to specify options on the command line even if the installer ultimatively selects GUI mode. In that case the hardwired defaults and the options determine the data presented to the user for editing.
The installer will select a number of defaults for the locations of packages, examples, and documentation, and also the format of the documentation. The user can overide these defaults in the GUI, or by specifying additional options. The defaults depend on the platform detected (Unix/Windows) and on the tclsh executable used to run the installer.
Options