Re: [MACTCL] tcl8.4a3 on OS X

[Daniel A. S. <st...@ic...>]

At 11:33 +0200 on 5/9/01, Jack Jansen wrote:

>  > two - more importantly, that sometimes tcl extension authors want to
>>  offer the option of link against the extension libraries instead of
>>  dynamically loading them e.g. to make available additional private
>>  symbols in addition to the standard blah_Init and blah_SafeInit that
>>  the dynamic loader binds.
>
>Ah. I now realise that I didn't tell everything. I'm building the core Python
>as a framework bundle (giving all the advantages of easy install, etc), but
>I'm not building the extension modules as plugin bundles. They're plain old
>.dylib shared libs.
>
>The core framework bundle already gives me all the advantages I want
>(relocatability from /Library to ~/Library by the user, self-containedness,
>version control, sharing between various apps such as the command line tool
>and the fullblown application, etc). Adding plugin bundles didn't seem worth
>the effort, and indeed your message seems to indicate it's not the right way
>to go.

indeed, there is big difference between the bundle directory 
structure and the bundle MachO binary format, they don't really have 
anything to do with one another, except that CFBundle which abstracts 
the directory structure can also be used to load MachO bundle code in 
an abstracted fashion (or via CFPlugin, which is based on CFBundle), 
see dyld.h & CFBundle.h

Tcl was build as a .framework bundle directory structure at some 
stage but later fred sanchez reverted to building tcl.dylib (along 
with most darwin ports) in a more unix standard manner into /usr/lib 
to minimize porting effort. I think Jim has said he'd like to move 
back to a .framework for Tcl when Tk is done.

Again this is a completely separate issue from dynamically loadable 
binary code format, where in most cases unix legacy code probably 
should not use the MachO bundle binary format.

Cheers,

Daniel
-- 
** Daniel A. Steffen          **  "And now to something completely
** Department of Mathematics  **   different"    Monty Python
** Macquarie University       ** <mailto:st...@ma...>
** NSW 2109 Australia         ** <http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/~steffen/>