11-27-2003 SRIV Finally got tclkit built on Windows in MinGW! With the help of Wojciech Kocjan's genkit, which needed a little updating, I blended Wojciech's script with JCW's current genkit to develop a smooth working version that currently only works on Windows.

Get my version at http://www.sr-tech.com/testing/genkit .

Here is how to use it:

Create a directory to work in on you computer in your msys home dir, i.e., buildtclkit.

Place my genkit script in this dir.

Under that, create a dir named tars.

Get all the tar.gz's and runtime.kit file from http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/tars/ and place these files in the tars directory.

At this point I'm going to assume you have an installed tclsh84.exe in your MinGW system. You'll need this to run the genkit script. To build it yourself, just extract the tcl8.4-src.tar.gz in your msys home dir, then build it with the sequence:

  cd tcl8.4/win
  ./configure
  make
  make install

  cd ~/buildtclkit

Ok, back to building the tclkit.

Here are the fun commands:

  tclsh84.exe genkit A     # unpacks the tars into the src dir under buildtclkit
  tclsh84.exe genkit B     # builds everything in sequence
  tclsh84.exe genkit D     # makes the dummy tclkit
  tclsh84.exe genkit E     # makes the final tclkit

Now, you should see a file name tclkit-yourhostname.exe in your buildtclkit dir!

In my spare time I'll work on cleanly integrating this script with the current genkit from JCW so that it can maintained from there.

Thanks Wojciech for sending me your version, which kept me from having to pull my hair out.

Performance notes: SRIV I ran some preliminary tclbench tests against JCW's tclkit8.4.4.exe and my MinGW version is slower on some tests and faster on others.

It was a pain getting tclbench to work until I installed ActiveTcl. I'd like to make a tclbench.kit to make testing tclkit performance easier in the future.

Kroc - 22 Jun 2004: I've done a TclBench.kit (v 1.15) see tclbench for details.

2004-03-12 update: fixed a hard-coded path bug in genkit. Tested today on WinXP using MinGW 3.1.0 using all the current tars, but using tcl/tk8.4.6 instead of 8.4.5. Works excellent so far.

Have you tried with 8.5a2 instead of 8.4.6?

2004-05-22 SRIV In order to do so requires changing a bunch of references to "8.4" in the script, so I was going to wait until there's a feature in 8.5a2 that I want to play with. Someone give me a reason!

Kroc - 29 Jun 2004: I use a tclkit-sh to run genkit instead of building tclsh from src and it works very well. I think hostname command may not work (because it's a XP command) so it could be better to replace it by uname -n (wich is a Msys command, thx PT for this trick). BTW, I was unable to make it work under win9x: it freezes after a while.

Maybe a guru can also find a way to build win32 Tclkit using a Linux hosted MinGW cross-compilation environment (check [1] for details).

For french users, I've done a translation of this page here: [2].

CT Can someone please post the windows genkit script as I can no longer access pb.sr4.org. Thanks.

2004-8-14 SRIV Updated new URL for genkit script. Tested ok on tcl/tk 8.4.7 .

CT Thanks Steve :^) On another note does anyone know if and how it is possible to change the icon for the exe that it built?

2004-8-16 SRIV Im sure you can change the icon in the tk source, but you may find it easier to use resourcehacker [3]. It alows you to change the icons and file descriptions embeded in a windows .exe file. The resouce hacker homepage refers to an open source resource editor at [4].

CT Thanks again Steve. I ran into a few problems with genkit though. The first was that recursive copying on step B seemed to be broken with the tclsh that ships with MinGW but I got around this by installing activestate tcl 8.4.7 and using that tclsh instead:

c:/tcl/bin/tclsh.exe genkit B

I then ran into a problem with step D with the origfetch function missing so I copied that from jc's original genkit script but then it gets to a point where it says it couldn't find 'setup.tcl'. The dummy .exe is created and despite getting the same missing 'setup.tcl' error on step E the final .exe is built too. Trying to execute either of the .exe files produces the same missing 'setup.tcl' error however. I am at work right now and will play with it more on my machine at home to try find out what the problem is.

SRIV 2004-Oct-3 Finally! I Built a tclkit.exe from tcl/tk 8.5 CVS. I'll post the build script after I add some error checking and cleanups. I'd like to build it on Linux next. The script is just for MinGW on Windows right now. I'll merge it with jcw's genkit script after he gets his platforms building well.

Vince Any further news with the 8.5 tclkit? I'd like to start testing and using that for some applications...

SRIV 2004-Oct-26 Well, Tk HEAD is hosed today, but I rebuilt a tclkit with todays tcl HEAD and my last working Tk. I haven't had much time to test the tclkit, but here it is [5] . For a Linux x86 build use this [6] .

[Snaury] 2006-07-31 So is genkit for building 8.5 with mingw is available anywhere now? SRIV's site seems to be down... SRIV Oops, power failure. Those files are old and have little value anymore, so its good that you didnt get to them :) I'll get my latest tclkit8.5 build script posted later today.

ctasada 2006-07-31 I've created my own script (based in the script created by "Eckhard Lehmann") send me an email to gmail (same username) and I'll send it to you.

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