Version 15 of Building Tcl DLL's for Windows

Updated 2002-05-25 00:46:39

Using Microsoft Visual C++ 6

  • Create a new win32 dynamic link library project and call it something nice, like tcldemo. This is going to be our package name too.
  • Select an 'Empty DLL' on the next dialog.
  • Before you get going, make sure you have told Visual Studio about the Tcl headers and libraries. To do this, open Tools->Options->Directories and give the Tcl include directory in the includes box and the libraries in the libraries box.
  • Open up the Project settings menu item for your new project and go to the C++ tab. Add USE_TCL_STUBS to the list of defined symbols and in the Link tab prepend tclstub83.lib to the list of libraries. (Adust the numerical suffix for your version of tcl).
  • Now we can write some code. Create a new C++ source file, called tcldemo.cpp and paste in the code below.
  • Build it. Ignore the whining about MSCVRT conflicts. You now have a DLL in either Debug/Release.
  • Fire up tclsh or better tkcon from the Debug or Release subdirectory under your project and issue
  load tcldemo.dll Tcldemo
  set tcldemo_version
  package require Tcldemo
  • You should get 0.1 printed twice!

Using mingw32 GNU C / C++

If you don't happen to have a copy of Microsoft's compiler then you can get a copy of GNU C compiled for the win32 platform. The mingw32 project is the minimal approach which uses only the native libraries and so doesn't support unix porting much - see http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw for the releases.

  • Create a .cpp or .cc file with the code below using your favourite editor. (eg: emacs)
  • Create a tcldemo.def file with the following lines:
 EXPORTS
 Tcldemo_Init
 Tcldemo_SafeInit
  • Compile the code:
 g++ -Wall -g -Ii:/opt/Tcl/include -c tcldemo.cpp -o tcldemo.o
 dllwrap --driver-name g++ -def tcldemo.def -o tcldemo.dll tcldemo.o -Li:/opt/Tcl/lib -ltcl83 -lm
  • Voila: you now have a tcldemo.dll. Test as above.

I've included a suitable Makefile below.

[ Q: isn't it possible to do this without a .def file? I thought the __declspec(dllexport) was supposed to make it unnecessary ]


The code:

 #include <windows.h>
 #include <tcl.h>

 #ifndef DECLSPEC_EXPORT
 #define DECLSPEC_EXPORT __declspec(dllexport)
 #endif // DECLSPEC_EXPORT

 BOOL APIENTRY
 DllMain(HANDLE hModule, DWORD dwReason, LPVOID lpReserved)
 {
     return TRUE;
 }

 EXTERN_C int DECLSPEC_EXPORT
 Tcldemo_Init(Tcl_Interp* interp)
 {
 #ifdef USE_TCL_STUBS
     Tcl_InitStubs(interp, "8.3", 0);
 #endif
     Tcl_Obj *version = Tcl_SetVar2Ex(interp, "tcldemo_version", NULL,
                                      Tcl_NewDoubleObj(0.1), TCL_LEAVE_ERR_MSG);
     if (version == NULL)
         return TCL_ERROR;
     int r = Tcl_PkgProvide(interp, "Tcldemo", Tcl_GetString(version));

     // Call Tcl_CreateObjCommand etc.

     return r;
 }

 EXTERN_C int DECLSPEC_EXPORT
 Tcldemo_SafeInit(Tcl_Interp* interp)
 {
     // We don't need to be specially safe so...
     return Tcldemo_Init(interp);
 }

 # -*- Makefile -*- for Tcl Demo
 #
 # @(#)$Id: 2419,v 1.16 2002-06-21 04:00:44 jcw Exp $

 CC      =g++
 DLLWRAP =dllwrap
 DLLTOOL =dlltool
 RM      =rm -f
 CFLAGS  =-Wall -Ii:/opt/tcl/include -DUSE_TCL_STUBS
 LDFLAGS =-Li:/opt/tcl/lib
 LIBS    =-ltclstub83

 DLL     =tcldemo.dll
 DEFFILE =tcldemo.def

 WRAPFLAGS =--driver-name $(CC) --def $(DEFFILE)

 CSRCS   =tcldemo.cpp
 OBJS    =$(CSRCS:.cpp=.o)

 $(DLL): $(OBJS)
         $(DLLWRAP) $(WRAPFLAGS) -o $@ $^ $(LDFLAGS) $(LIBS)

 clean:
         $(RM) *.o core *~

 %.o: %.cpp
         $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

 .PHONY: clean

 #
 # Local variables:
 #   mode: makefile
 # End:
 #

This excellent piece of work was created and put here by Pat Thoyts. Thanks Pat!