README
1
2I. Building the Tcl thread extension for Unix
3=============================================
4
5Extension can be compiled on several Unix derivates including various
6distributions of Linux. Build process is pretty straightforward. I've
7checked some versions of Solaris, Linux and Darwin, but the extension
8should compile without problems on any Unix-like operating system
9with a proper pthreads library implementation.
10
11To build on Unix-like operating systems, start with the CONFIG script
12and see if there is already a combination of the "configure" options
13which may satisfy your needs. If not, you can run the configure script
14located in the root of the distribution directory with a choice of
15supported options yourself. If yes, you can uncomment corresponding
16lines from the CONFIG script and do:
17
18 % sh CONFIG
19
20Either way, this will create a Makefile which you use to run "make" and
21"make install".
22You can use "make clean" to clean the directory from temporary compilation
23files and/or "make distclean" to additionaly remove local config files.
24You might want to do "make test" before doing the "make install" in order
25to run the regression tests on the package.
26
27To explore other building options, look into the CONFIG file for more
28information.
29
30
31Note for AOLserver users
32------------------------
33
34The extension can be compiled as a loadable module for the AOLserver
35version 4.0 or higher. In order to do this, use "--with-aolserver"
36configure option to specify the directory containing the AOLserver
37distribution. The CONFIG script has an example how to invoke configure
38in order to build the extension as AOLserver module.
39Note, however, that "make install" and "make test" targets are still
40not supported for AOLserver builds. This will be corrected in one of
41the future releases.
42
43To fine-tune, you might also want to make the tsv::* commands replace
44the AOLserver built-in nsv_* family of commands, since they are API
45compatible and provide richer command set plus advanced shared-object
46storage of shared data. Go to the generic/threadSvCmd.h file and look
47at the beginning of the file for the:
48
49/* #define NSV_COMPAT 1 */
50
51So, uncomment the line, recompile and there you go.
52
53
54II. Building optional support libraries
55=======================================
56
57As of 2.6 release, this extension supports persistent shared variables.
58To use this functionality, you might need to download and compile some
59other supporting libraries. Currently, there is a simple implementation
60of shared variable persistency built atop of popular GNU Gdbm package.
61You can obtain the latest version of the Gdbm package from the GNU
62website at: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/gdbm.html
63To compile with GNU Gdbm support you must configure with --with-gdbm
64switch. This option, if used, will try to locate the Gdbm library on
65your system at couple of standard locations. You might override this
66behaviour by giving --with-gdbm=/some/dir. Note that both library file
67and the include file must then reside in this directory.
68
69-EOF-
70