Tcl Stubs (Tables)

This project contains a set of (pure) Tcl packages for the handling of Tcl stubs table declarations. They provide functionality to:

• Parse stubs declarations (.decls files).
• Represent stubs tables as Tcl objects (containers).
• Generate a variety of C code from stubs tables.

Historically speaking we have the genStubs.tcl application distributed with the Tcl core itself. The packages here are, in essence, (nearly) the same code, just sliced and diced into packages for easier reuse in other contexts which have to handle Tcl stubs tables. Like, for example, Jean-Claude Wippler's critcl application and package.

For more information about the history and concepts behind Tcl's stub tables please read the package's documentation.

Installing the packages

• The toplevel directory contains a Tcl script build.tcl for installing the packages (and adjunct application).

• to install the packages simply run:

  % ./build.tcl install

  This installs the packages in the [info library] directory of the tclsh found in PATH and used to run build.tcl.

  Explicitly using a specific tclsh, like

  % /path/to/tclsh ./build.tcl install

  will install the packages in the [info library] directory of that shell.

  Explicitly using a specific installation directory, like

  % ./build.tcl install /path/to/chosen/package/directory/

  will install all the packages there.

• To get online help, run

  % ./build.tcl help

Documentation

• The source of the reference manpages for the packages can be found in the sub-directory "doc/", with various (shared) text blocks under "doc/include/". They are written using 'doctools' markup (See Tcllib's doctools packages). The files match the pattern "doc/*.man", and "doc/include/*.inc".

• The files matching the pattern "doc/include/*.dia" are diagram specifications using the 'dia' markup language (See Tklib's diagram packages). The files matching the pattern "doc/include/*.png" are the diagrams saved as raster images in the PNG format.

  This was done with the dia application found in Tklib.

• The directory "embedded/" contains the reference manpages in nroff and HTML formats, derived from the doctools sources under "doc/".

  The script used to (re)generate these files is "tools/makedoc.sh". It requires the dtplite application found in Tcllib.