From bills@lcdmultimedia.com Fri Apr 24 20:20:20 CDT 1998
Article: 83938 of comp.lang.tcl
From: "Bill Schongar" <bills@lcdmultimedia.com>
Subject: [A] Creating binary distributions on Windows
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
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Howdy,

  (A related thread on this topic was up here in March, but I
can't seem to find it anywhere except dejanews, so
I'm just creating a new one. )

 Nope, this isn't a question.

 Having run into the "how do I do this" question myself, but only 
recently finding an solution, I thought I'd share a method to make 
a working single binary "wish" for Windows distribution. (It's also 
solved my "how do I protect parts of my code" problem on both
Windows and UNIX..)

 First, get the Plus-Patch (http://www.worldaccess.nl/~nijtmans/plus.html)
and compile it. This gives you several things that you need -
the static TCL/TK libraries (tcl80sa.lib, tk80sa.lib) and "tcl2c".

 Next, make a TCL script that just contains:

	set cmd "source main.tcl"
	eval $foo

 (There's a reason for this, I'll get to it in a minute"

 Now, run tcl2c on your TCL script. The following line assumes you
need the TK libraries, and that the tcl script is called "foo.tcl":

	tcl2c -o foo.c foo.tcl -tk -a

 Now, compile that C file, adding the following libraries to the 
linker: oldnames.lib, msvcrt.lib, libc.lib, tcl80sa.lib, and tk80sa.lib

 (Note for the less-than-comfortable-with-VisualC++: All you
have to do is start a new project workspace, add those library 
files to the linker list (in 'Project Settings'), and hit "Build All".
If you don't want to point the linker to the TCL/TK static libs, just 
copy them into the directory with your other LIB files..)

 You now have a binary that, when run, will automatically source the file
"main.tcl" (And you'd better have one, because it will error out fatally if
it can't find it...) The reason not to use just "source main.tcl" in the
TCl script you're compiling is that it will embed any files which are
"source"d
that way, which gives you a complete binary with all the code internalized,
but you have to recompile the EXE for evey application.

 Okay, I'll stop typing now..  take this all with a grain of salt -
I just got everything working right last night.. : )

-Bill