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. Starting with pgtcl-ng release 1.6.0, if the PostgreSQL command pg_config can be located with your command search PATH, you do not need specify the locations. For example, just this will work on many systems:

./configure

If pg_config is not on your PATH (or you are building a pgtcl-ng older than 1.6.0), you need to specify the location of the PostgreSQL library and include directories. For example:

./configure --with-postgres-include=/opt/postgresql/include \
            --with-postgres-lib=/opt/postgresql/lib

The location of the Tcl installation also is needed. On many systems, this is automatically located by configure. If not, use --with-tcl=DIR, where DIR is the path of the directory containing tclConfig.sh, and --with-tclinclude=IDIR, where IDIR is the path of the directory containing Tcl header files. You might be able to omit --with-tclinclude if you have only one Tcl installation and the header files are in a common place. (For some reason, configure does not use the information in tclConfig.sh to locate the header files.) For example, the following works on Ubuntu-12.04LTS (assuming the tcl8.4 and tcl8.4-dev packages are installed, as well as the PostgreSQL client packages):

./configure --with-tcl=/usr/lib/tcl8.4

This may be needed if you have Tcl installed in an unusual place, or have multiple versions of Tcl installed:

./configure --with-tcl=/opt/tcl86/lib --with-tclinclude=/opt/tcl86/include

You can also use --libdir=DIR to specify the installation target directory if you want to use make install. You can omit --libdir if you are going to manually install the library.

To build pgtcl-ng, just type:

$  make 

If all goes well, you will end up with a shared library file named something like libpgtcl2.1.0.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/tcl8.6/pgtcl2.1
$ cp libpgtcl2.1.0.so pkgIndex.tcl /usr/lib/tcl8.6/pgtcl2.1

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