Purpose: gather together tips and techniques, tool recommendations, etc. for compiling Tcl and related extensions on a Windows machine. ---- [Steve Blinkhorn] wrote on comp.lang.tcl recently [[change this into a google reference to acvls9$hj8$1@fastnet.prd.co.uk]] praising the Mingw C compiler distribution as being the way one can compile the same code on windows as well as various unix systems. [[Re: cross-platform compiles - Is there a version of mingw for MacOS? ''For Mac OS <=9, no there isn't (at least not that I know of), but for Mac OS X, of course there is 'gcc' as standard.''] ---- Those who have the financial wherewithall to buy Visual C++ have been advocating its use, as the executables are ''better''. ---- Many times Window developers attempt to compile Tcl and Tk using the [Cygnus] [Cygwin] Windows development environment, since that's what they use for other projects. For reasons that at least one non-Windows developer does not understand, Tcl doesn't compile with the default Cygnus environment. Thus, people keep telling people to use the Mingw C compiler mentioned above. ---- Another popular free C compiler is the Borland C compiler. See [Helmut Giese]'s comp.lang.tcl article titled '''Borland support: Wrapping it all up''' from Mon, 29 Jul 2002 19:29:28 GMT, [[Perhaps someone can turn this into a groups.google.com thread URL? Message-ID: <3d459689.2875662@News.CIS.DFN.DE ]] in which Helmut volunteers info on using Borland compiler to build Tcl. ---- Another commonly discussed technique is using a Linux machine and cross compiling to generate Windows binaries. [[Someone have some URLs or wiki references here?]] I have seen notes indicating that Tcl and Tk can be compiled using the gcc free compiler in unix as well as Win32 (EGCS, [FSF], cygwin32, [mingw32]) [[There's duplication between this text and that in "[C Language]".]] environments. Also, Win32's lcc should work. See http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/%7Ekhan/software/gnu-win32/ , http://www.xraylith.wisc.edu/%7Ekhan/software/tcl/ , http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/ , http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/ , http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Elcc-win32 , ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/mingw32/porters/Mikey/ , ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/sourceware/cygwin/latest/setup.exe , ftp://ftp.yggdrasil.com/mirrors/site/sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/cygwin/latest/ , ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/sourceware/cygwin/latest/ , http://www.hwaci.com/sw/mktclapp/win32-compile.html Be sure that you understand http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/faq/faq_9.html#SEC145 very well, perhaps even discussing it with a lawyer, before using cygwin to produce software you wish to sell. Nothing there prevents you from doing this - however, there are a variety of considerations that one needs to make, when using tools some of which are covered by the GPL. ---- "Packers ..." [http://linux20368.dn.net/protools/packers.htm] describes a variety of products of interest to those involved in application-level [obfuscation], compression, and so on.