Steps to build Tcl/Tk 8.4.0 on MacOS X

Christopher Sean Morrison wrote to the mailto:[email protected] mailing list on Sep 12, 2002:

Daniel,

Thanks for the tips. Went and did a clean recompile and things worked out just great. We were using an 8.4.0 distribution archive version downloaded from sf, and the directory name assumption appears to be what was biting us.

For anyone else trying to get things to work, here is the exact process that worked clean for us:

 [[downloaded tcl and tk 8.4.0 from sourceforge]
 tar zxvf tcl8.4.0-src.tar.gz
 tar zxvf tk8.4.0-src.tar.gz
 mv tcl8.4.0 tcl
 mv tk8.4.0 tk
 cd tcl/macosx
 make >& make.log
 sudo make install
 cd ../../tk/macosx
 make >& make.log
 sudo make install
 open /Applications/Utilities/Wish\ Shell.app

Now... to get our application to link against the new tcl/tk libraries and see what happens..


After looking through the Mac Tcl archives, I found a post that described the problem I encountered.

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=2169317

Simply copying prolog.ps from tk/generic into tk/library fixed everything. Executing the command

cp ../generic/prolog.ps ../library/prolog.ps

after cd ../../tk/macosx above solves the problems. Apparently the tar ball on SF did not have this file.

Thanks,

Bruce

P.S. For more details, see:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=1060496&forum_id=3853

P.P.S. Larry, my apologies for using the Wiki in this manner. Feel free to clean this additon in any manner you see fit.


LV Bruce, ask your question at the above mentioned mailing list for help. But the behavior you mention above indicates that something strange is going on with the compile not finding the tcl directory - almost as if the step to rename tcl8.4.0 to tcl didn't occur.


I asked Daniel A Steffen where online a MacOS X developer could find the Developer Tools CD that is frequently mentioned as being needed to build various packages. Daniel replies:

 > as Mark has already mentioned, if you have a store-bought copy of Mac
 > OS X 10.x, it includes a Developer Tools CD.
 > 
 > on a new mac with Mac OS X preinstalled; AFAIK, there should be a
 > diskimage on the harddrive somewhere containing the developer tools.
 > 
 > updates (including the April Developer Tools I mentioned eralier) can
 > be obtained from http://connect.apple.com with a free Apple Developer
 > Connection online membership (registration required...)
 > 
 > Once installed, you'll find the tools in /Developer/Applications

The mark referenced above is Mark Roseman, who writes in comp.lang.tcl:

 > The developer tools (Project Builder etc.) actually come on a
 > separate CD packaged with MacOS X.  Or you can just hop over to
 > http://developer.apple.com and download.

See also MacOS X.


Category Mac