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] Windows compiler 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) 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 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.