RE: [tcltk-perl] RE: Tcl-Tk-0.77

[Jeff H. <je...@Ac...>]

> > Can you elaborate on what you mean here?  I think I understand it to 
> > mean relocatable shared libs on any platform, but I'm not quite sure.
> 
> I was thinking only for Windows, but yes, having such a 
> feature on all platforms must be done, not only for one of them.
> 
> I meant that from time to time it is needed to package all 
> required files into one executable so to have a possibility 
> to run it regardless whether computer have Tcl (or Perl) 
> installed. This is why "starkit"/tclkit is needed, and Perl's PAR.

We have starkits on the Tcl side, but not dll-based ones.  I
would have to look into that further.  In any case, Windows
is the one platform I'm least worried about, because cwd and
the path to the executable are guaranteed to be in the load
path, which makes relocation unnecessary (as it also has
defined lookup paths in Tcl).  It's the other platforms that
are more ornery.

> > operate like the Tcl browser plugin.  There would be no implicit 
> > dependencies on a particular set of Tcl/Tk dlls.  Instead you would 
> > start up and then try to load the Tcl and Tk dlls based on a set of 
> > heuristics.  This frees you from

> It would be fine if mentioned "heuristic" could be configured 
> somehow. Most obviously - to have a way to specify exact 
> location of binaries. Up to now I used some hack for this.

You define the heuristic in code, but currently on Windows
the Tcl browser plugin looks in:

1) Hard-coded (binary patchable) directory
2) Path based registry location of installed ActiveTcl

and on Unix:

1) TCL_PLUGIN_DLL env var
2) Hard-coded (binary patchable) directory
3) any compatible version on LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Jeff