From Newsgroup: comp.lang.tcl

[Last one from me for the day!]

The system disk on my Windows machine failed the other day. I have a new
one on order but will obviously, have to build and/or re-install a whole
load of software. From memory, previous attempts to build Tcl have
failed and I was relying on moderately ancient ActiveTcl installation (8.6.13?). It seems far to retrograde a step to install that on a system
in 2026, so I shall make another attempt to build the latest Tcl for my Windows system.

From memory:

I don't wish to install MagicSplat. It's an excellent package, but,
quite correctly, it follows recommended Windows installation guidelines
and I simply can't be bothered to learn these well enough to be able to
hook up to my extensive library of personalised packages.

If I install the Visual Studio C++ compiler a) It takes ages to start up
and b) requires that I put sources etc. etc. in places that I would
rather not have them.

Ideally, I'd like to build under Cygwin and install to C:\tcl9.0.4, if I
must, I'm happy to build under MSys and install to the same place.

What problems am I likely to come across if I go down this route.
Nowadays I'm generally a UNIX user so I don't regard searching around
for sources of packages I might need, and compiling them myself as a "problem".

Thanks in advance for any help with compile-and-build advice.


Alan
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.tcl

* Alan Grunwald <nospam.nurdglaw@gmail.com>
| If I install the Visual Studio C++ compiler a) It takes ages to start
| up and b) requires that I put sources etc. etc. in places that I would
| rather not have them.

I think there is a rather current makefile.vc in current TCL source
releases which should work from a VS cmd.exe.

| Ideally, I'd like to build under Cygwin and install to C:\tcl9.0.4, if
| I must, I'm happy to build under MSys and install to the same place.

We're building TCL/Tk in 'old' msys-1 bash and using the VS compiler:

- start a VS development cmd.exe to get the necessary environment
- in that, start msys bash
- in that:
export CC=cl PATH=/c/windows/system32:$(PATH)
cd $(TCLDIR)/win \
&& ./configure --enable-threads --disable-symbols --prefix .... --enable-64bit \
&& make RC=rc STLIB_LD="link.exe -lib -nologo" SHLIB_LD="link.exe -dll -incremental:no -nologo \
&& make install install-private-headers

I would guess mingw on current msys2 should work even better with all defaults...

HTH
R'
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From Newsgroup: comp.lang.tcl

On 03/07/2026 17:39, Ralf Fassel wrote:

* Alan Grunwald <nospam.nurdglaw@gmail.com>
| If I install the Visual Studio C++ compiler a) It takes ages to start
| up and b) requires that I put sources etc. etc. in places that I would
| rather not have them.

I think there is a rather current makefile.vc in current TCL source
releases which should work from a VS cmd.exe.

| Ideally, I'd like to build under Cygwin and install to C:\tcl9.0.4, if
| I must, I'm happy to build under MSys and install to the same place.

We're building TCL/Tk in 'old' msys-1 bash and using the VS compiler:

- start a VS development cmd.exe to get the necessary environment
- in that, start msys bash
- in that:
export CC=cl PATH=/c/windows/system32:$(PATH)
cd $(TCLDIR)/win \
&& ./configure --enable-threads --disable-symbols --prefix .... --enable-64bit \
&& make RC=rc STLIB_LD="link.exe -lib -nologo" SHLIB_LD="link.exe -dll -incremental:no -nologo \
&& make install install-private-headers

I would guess mingw on current msys2 should work even better with all defaults...

HTH
R'

Thanks Ralf, I'll bear that in mind as an option.


Alan
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