Purpose: accumulate notes about building, testing and installing Tcl from its source distribution.
Tcl is frequently obtained by getting the C source code and compiling it. Tcl comes with generic code plus modules specifically designed to compile on Unix derived, Windows, and MacOS. [Add something here about platforms other than these 3 do].
The steps one takes to build a fresh copy of Tcl are frequently something like:
- download a copy of the Tcl zip or source file
- create a directory where you plan on compiling the code
- determine where you want to install the binaries
- cd into the tcl top level directory
- read the README file (and possibly the ChangeLog and changes files).
- cd into either the unix, win, mac, or macosx directory
- execute ./configure --help to determine what flags are available to you on your platform and resolve any errors
[Note that this step is non-trivial to complete successfully on at least the Windows and MacOS platforms. Perhaps someone will add in a reference here regaling us with their horror stories.]
- execute ./configure --The --Appropriate --Flags --For --Your --Site [where you replace these flags with the real ones you need]
- execute make and resolve any errors
- execute make test and investigate errors. Contact people on http://tcl.sf.net/ , news:comp.lang.tcl or http://wiki.tcl.tk/ for help.
- execute make install and resolve any errors