| Ticket UUID: | 2ef3430fdc612eb42a7a0aae7b3babed08d92c17 | ||
| Title: | Don't assume that host=*mingw32* means cross-compiling | ||
| Type: | Bug | Created on: | 2025-10-26 13:24:59 |
| Submitter: | oscarfv | Assigned to: | jan.nijtmans |
| Subsystem: | 53. Configuration and Build Tools | Severity: | Important |
| Priority: | 5 Medium | Last modified: | 2026-10-22 17:19:28 |
| Status: | Closed | Closed by: | serhiy.storchaka |
| Resolution: | Fixed | Closed on: | 2026-10-20 15:21:42 |
| Version: | 8.6.18, 9.0.5, 9.1.0 | ||
| Description: | ||||
win/configure has this:
# Cross-compiling
case ${host_alias} in
*mingw32*)
TCL_EXE="tclsh"
;;
*)
TCL_EXE="TCL_LIBRARY=\"\${LIBRARY_DIR}\"; export TCL_LIBRARY; ./\${TCLSH}"
;;
esac
The problem is that it assumes the existence of tclsh. When building under MSYS2 or Cygwin, that is not necessarily true, neither the pre-existing tclsh is required.
The current behavior makes the build to fail under MSYS2/Cygwin unless the user has tclsh already installed.
We either need a more robust mechanism for detecting a "true" cross-compilation and/or just test for the presence of tclsh at configure time.
| ||||
| User Comments: | ||||
jan.nijtmans added on 2025-10-28 10:53:26:
I'm open to a better solution here anonymous added on 2025-10-28 12:32:09:
What about using tclsh if it is available and the generated tclsh if it is not?
AC_CHECK_PROG(TCL_EXE, tclsh, tclsh, "TCL_LIBRARY=\"\${LIBRARY_DIR}\"; export TCL_LIBRARY; ./\${TCLSH}")
... or always use the generated tclsh when we know that we can execute it (i.e. we are running on Windows):
AC_CANONICAL_HOST
case "${host_os}" in
cygwin*|mingw*)
TCL_EXE="TCL_LIBRARY=\"\${LIBRARY_DIR}\"; export TCL_LIBRARY; ./\${TCLSH}"
;;
*)
TCL_EXE="tclsh"
;;
esac
You can argue that the build will fail if it is a true cross-compilation and tclsh is absent, but that problem already exists with the current implementation.
For improving that, the configure script could put a check for the existence of tclsh on the *) case above and throw an error when absent.
(As I already mentioned, I don't really know about autotools, the above is the result of a quick web search.)
oscarfv added on 2025-10-28 15:20:55:
Just in case you go with the second option and for the sake of completeness, let's cover MSYS* as well:
AC_CANONICAL_HOST
case "${host_os}" in
cygwin*|msys*|mingw*)
TCL_EXE="TCL_LIBRARY=\"\${LIBRARY_DIR}\"; export TCL_LIBRARY; ./\${TCLSH}"
;;
*)
TCL_EXE="tclsh"
;;
esac
serhiy.storchaka added on 2026-10-20 13:27:21:
Confirmed with a native MSYS2 UCRT64 build: with no tclsh on PATH,
jan.nijtmans added on 2026-10-20 14:23:52:
I like this solution! +1 to merge | ||||