Tcl Source Code

Trying to load the sampleextension into a tclsh built with MingW64, I get the following error:

$ /d/tcl/mingw/wip/x64/bin/tclsh90.exe
% load tcl9sample06.dll
interpreter uses an incompatible stubs mechanism

This works fine when built with either VC++ or with gcc on Ubuntu.

Right, I realized as much but the question is why this happens. Both Ubuntu and Mingw64 have a system Tcl installed but this error only shows up on Mingw64. In both cases --with-tcl specifies the Tcl9 installation and the config.log shows the correct 9.0 tclConfig.sh being picked up.

Tracing through it appears this is caused by the following fragment from the configure script

if test -n "$CONFIG_SITE"; then
  ac_site_files="$CONFIG_SITE"
elif test "x$prefix" != xNONE; then
  ac_site_files="$prefix/share/config.site $prefix/etc/config.site"
else
  ac_site_files="$ac_default_prefix/share/config.site $ac_default_prefix/etc/config.site"
fi
for ac_site_file in $ac_site_files
do
  case $ac_site_file in #(
  */*) :
     ;; #(
  *) :
    ac_site_file=./$ac_site_file ;;
esac
  if test -f "$ac_site_file" && test -r "$ac_site_file"; then
    { printf "%s\n" "$as_me:${as_lineno-$LINENO}: loading site script $ac_site_file" >&5
printf "%s\n" "$as_me: loading site script $ac_site_file" >&6;}
    sed 's/^/| /' "$ac_site_file" >&5
    . "$ac_site_file" \
      || { { printf "%s\n" "$as_me:${as_lineno-$LINENO}: error: in \`$ac_pwd':" >&5

On mingw, the system picks up /etc/config.site resulting in prefix being set to /mingw64. On Ubuntu, the equivalent site file does not exist resulting in prefix staying as NONE. Later on includedir is set to $(prefix)/include and this is preferred over $(TCL_PREFIX)/include in the search for tcl.h.

It does not make sense to me as that the site path is given preference over the path specified via --with-tcl to configure. If that option is specified, all paths should target that directory. But then again, I know little about Unix conventions. It seems to me though, every extension writer is going to run into this and wonder if they have made some error in porting to Tcl 9. As I did.

Using --with-tclinclude in configure fixes the problem but really should not be required once --with-tcl is specified.