MacTcl is the name the community has used over time for a version of Tcl that runs on MacOS operating systems.
The focus of this page is to provide pointers and brief tips on building Tcl/Tk (and extensions for it) on MacOS 7, 8, 9, and X.
For pointers on using Tcl on the Mac, including notes on installation of pre-built binaries, go to Apple Macintosh and Tcl/Tk instead.
For a quick overview of all Mac related pages on this wiki, try http://mini.net/tcl/mac
Key MacTcl resources on the web
Building MacTcl
(notes under construction, to be adjusted while I make progress -jcw)
- James Bonfield describes in this tcl-mac post [L1 ] what CVS branch to use to get started when building Tcl/Tk using Apple's ProjectBuilder (a GUI which uses gcc and make under the hood)
MacOS X specifics
- terminology: Carbon(ized), Cocoa, packages, Quartz, .dmg files, frameworks [explain, or better still: point to web pages]
- dynamic libraries [explain Mach-O], "two-level names", pre-binding
- Project Builder (Interface Builder, AppleScript Studio)
- where things live in the file system
- X-windows, Oroboros (sp?), rootless X windows
- running in the Classic environment within MacOS X
The Mac Is Different
- AppleScript
- the lack of "exec" and pipes
- socket differences
- encoding
- pathnames work differently (colons, but not in same place as slash)