To build pgtcl-ng on Unix-like Systems, you need:

Pgtcl-ng is Tcl Extension Architecture (TEA) compliant, shipping with a standard configure script. You do not need to have a PostgreSQL source distribution available to build pgtcl-ng, but you need a PostgreSQL installation with libraries and header files.

After unpacking the pgtcl-ng distribution, change directory into the top level of the distribution.

To configure pgtcl-ng, the paths to the to the PostgreSQL include files and library files must be known. For releases of pgtcl-ng before 1.6.0, you must specify these paths on the configure command line. If you have the pg_config program supplied with PostgreSQL on your PATH, you can use it to specify the directories as follows:

$  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
     --libdir=/usr/lib/tcl8.5 \
     --with-postgres-include=$(pg_config --includedir) \
     --with-postgres-lib=$(pg_config --libdir)

If you don't have pg_config available, you can specify the directories on the command line, for example:

$  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
     --libdir=/usr/lib/tcl8.5 \
     --with-postgres-include=/opt/postgres/include \
     --with-postgres-lib=/opt/postgres/lib

assuming you have installed PostgreSQL in the directory /opt/postgres.

In the above configure commands, we have specified both --prefix and --libdir. If you are going to manually install the product (which is easy, since there is just one file produced), you can use anything you want or omit these. If you plan to use the install target in the Makefile, you need to point --libdir to a location where Tcl will look for package directories. On a typical system, this may be /usr/lib/tcl8.5/ as shown above. The --prefix is only used for the header file installation (which is normally not needed anyway).

Starting with pgtcl-ng release 1.6.0, you can omit the --with-postgres-lib and/or --with-postgres-include options to configure, and the pg_config command will be used to locate those directories. For this to work, pg_config needs to be on your PATH. pg_config is part of the PostgreSQL installation. You may use configure like this:

$  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
     --libdir=/usr/lib/tcl8.5

To build pgtcl-ng, just type:

$  make 

If all goes well, you will end up with a shared library file named something like libpgtcl1.8.0.so.

You can install pgtcl-ng with:

$  make install

to install everything in the paths set during configure, as indicated above. If the paths are chosen right, the result will be enabled for package loading.

You may choose instead to manually install pgtcl-ng. If you will be loading libpgtcl directly in your application, you need only copy that file into a convenient location for loading. Note that libpgtcl will need to find the PostgreSQL libpq loadable library.

If you want to be able to load libpgtcl into applications using

package require Pgtcl

you need to install libpgtcl into a subdirectory of Tcl's tcl_pkgPath or auto_path, and include the file pkgIndex.tcl which tells Tcl how to load the package. For example:

$ mkdir /usr/lib/tcl8.5/pgtcl1.8
$ cp libpgtcl1.8.0.so pkgIndex.tcl /usr/lib/tcl8.5/pgtcl1.8

This is what the make install target does. Note: The name of the directory under the Tcl library directory is not important, as the extension will be found regardless of the directory name. You may choose to use the three-part version number in the name, or just the major and minor version numbers.

Here are the prerequisites for building pgtcl-ng on Windows using MinGW. Note that specific versions of each product are mentioned. Newer versions will probably work, and older versions are less likely to work. The versions listed here have been tested.

To build pgtcl-ng on Windows with MinGW tools, you need:

To build with MinGW, simply edit the Makefile mingw.mak with any text editor and set the pathnames as shown below. Note that you can use either forward (/) or backward (\) slashes when specifying pathnames in this Makefile.

To use pgtcl on Windows, you will need the libpgtcl.dll and also the EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL loadable libraries. The main dependency is the front-end library libpq.dll, but that has other dependent libraries which are distributed with EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL. In order to run pgtcl applications, you should have the entire EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL distribution bin directory, and it must be in your PATH before loading libpgtcl.dll.

Here are the prerequisites for building pgtcl-ng on Windows using Borland tools. Note that specific versions of each product are mentioned. Newer versions will probably work, and older versions are less likely to work. The versions listed here have been tested.

To build pgtcl-ng on Windows with Borland tools, you need:

Following the instructions below, you will first build the the PostgreSQL libpq loadable library. Then you will build the pgtcl-ng loadable library libpgtcl, and link it with ActiveState Tcl libraries.

Here are the steps to build pgtcl-ng on Windows. You will be working mostly in a Command Prompt window. (The prompt is shown below as C:\> but your prompt will vary.)

The steps below assume your Borland compiler is installed at c:\apps\bcc, ActiveState Tcl is installed at c:\apps\tcl, your PostgreSQL source is unpacked at c:\src\pgsql, pgtcl-ng is unpacked at c:\src\pgtcl, and the Tcl source release (if needed) is unpacked at c:\src\tcl. Adjust the pathnames shown below to match your actual installation.

To use pgtcl on Windows, you will need the two files you built: c:\src\pgsql\src\interfaces\libpq\release\blibpq.dll, and c:\src\pgtcl\libpgtcl.dll The Makefile contains an installation target you may choose to use:

C:\>  make -f bcc32.mak install

This will install the two library files and a specially modified package loading script into a new package directory in your Tcl library directory.

Our successful report building pgtcl on MacOS used:

The user-submitted configure command for MacOS X follows. It specifies additional link libraries using the EXTRA_LIBS environment variable. This is used to link in the ssl libraries needed by libpq.

EXTRA_LIBS='-lssl -lcrypto' \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
  --libdir=/Library/Tcl \
  --with-postgres-include=/usr/local/pgsql/include \
  --with-postgres-lib=/usr/local/pgsql/lib \
  --with-tcl=/Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework \
  --with-tclinclude=/Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Headers