Static linking, BSD, NT, ...

Cameron Laird (claird@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM)
Tue, 29 Oct 1996 15:26:29 -0600 (CST)

There are a number of issues that have come up recently on
which I have a bit to add. They're all at least weakly
related, so, rather than reply to each one separately, I've
collected this over-sized announcement:
1. Kirk Rogers wondered why he's having problems
accessing Tcl_CreatePipeline, and J. Youn and
others advised him that it's a version incom-
patibility. Apparently most people are
going with Tcl7.5 and Tk4.1. I want folks to
know that Scotty2.1.5 does not rely on
Tcl_CreatePipeline, and works fine with the
distribution of Tcl7.6 and Tk4.2; at least, it
does everything I ask. In particular, unlike
Mike Marek, I'm having no problems with
Tcl_SetVar2. I think there are other combina-
tions with Tcl7.6p1 that are also possible, but
I see no reason to attend to them. I'm going
with [7.6; 4.2; 2.1.5].
2. A number of people (including Anton Osennikov,
who has been waiting on me for about two months)
have asked about statically-linked versions.
Why? Some OSs appear to load dynamic objects
flakily (AIX?), some have poor forward- or
backward-compatibility across OS versions (HP-
UX), some come without a compiler that
understands dynamic linking (some HP-UX, most
BSDs), and some of us have installation or
deployment issues that incline us toward static
linking (and yes, I understand most of the
point of dynamic loading has to do with deploy-
ment. It's just that it doesn't solve all the
problems).

I've been making statically-linked Scotty ap-
plications on a trim-and-fit basis for some
time with no great difficulty. In my own work,
I'm now at a point where I've decided to move
toward greater automation. I'm writing up my
notes so that others can read them; perhaps if
I become sufficiently comfortable with configure,
I'll even figure out a way to make it generally
available as a hands-free patch. I should start
publishing the work at <URL:http://starbase.
neosoft.com/~claird/comp.lang.tcl/scotty.html>
within the next couple of days. For now, please
know, fellow Scotty fans, that it *is* possible,
and that details will appear soon.
3. Contrary to the impression a number of people
still have, the NT version *is* available (yip-
pee! This is not a recommendation of WNT, but
a celebration of Juergen's achievement in
making his great work available there, too).
I'm just starting to tinker with the NT version,
but there's a chance I'll supplement Juergen's
offering (see the README; it's a bit different
from the Unix side) with a command-line scotty.

Cameron Laird
Network Engineered Solutions http://starbase.neosoft.com/~bodi/nesi.html
claird@calladan.com +1 713 763 8366
claird@NeoSoft.com +1 713 996 8546 FAX
Houston WWW Business Guide: http://starbase.neosoft.com/~bodi/HouGuide.html