Tcl 7.3, TclX7.3a, Tk3.6 for MSDOS & Desqview/X

Tom Poindexter
tpoind@advtech.uswest.com
December, 1993

I did a quick port/hack of Tcl 7.3, TclX7.3a, and Tk3.6 to MSDOS.

"Yes Virginia, you can run Wish under MSDOS!"  (see below)

Where to get the files:
harbor.ecn.purdue.edu   /pub/tcl/distrib/mstcl73s.zip       source code
                        /pub/tcl/distrib/mstcl73e.zip       executables

To unpack the files:
cd \
pkunzip -d mstcl73s.zip       (unpacks in \src)
pkunzip -d mstcl73e.zip       (unpacks in \usr)

The executables included are:
	tclsh	The standard Tcl shell (Tcl7.3)
	tcl	The Extended Tcl shell (Tcl7.3 + TclX7.3a)
	wish	The standard Windowing Shell (Tcl7.3 + Tk3.6)
	wishx	The Extended Windowing Shell (Tcl7.3 + TclX7.3a + Tk3.6)

Tclsh and tcl run under MSDOS, and use a 32 bit extender (DJ Delorie's GO32).  
Wish and wishx are linked with Quarterdeck's libraries for Desqview/X.

** Desqview/X is required to run wish and wishx! **

If you are unfamiliar with Desqview/X, it's an X server and also a Dos
multitasker.  You run the X server *and* X clients on Dos; additional
networking support from Quarterdeck allows TCP/IP support.  For more info,
see comp.os.msdos.desqview, or email to info@qdeck.com, or ftp to qdeck.com.

This port is NOT the much requested "Wish for Windows"
The wish/wishx executables DO NOT RUN IN MS-WINDOWS!!!  (You can run 
MS-Windows in Desqview/X, however.)

The tclsh/tcl interpreters run fine under MS-Windows inside a Dos window.


COPYRIGHTS:

There are plenty.  See the files \src\copying.* or \usr\copying.*, 
plus each file's headers.  Also see \src\readme.* or \usr\readme.*
for info on Dj Delorie's GNU C port.

I did very little of the work here, and I don't claim any copyright on 
my changes or additions.  Do respect the copyrights of others.


SUPPORT:

I'm not supporting this port as an ongoing project.  I hacked too many
files and made numerous small tweaks here and there to keep track of in neat 
diff files.  When the next versions of the base code come out, don't expect to
see new versions of this port.

Bug reports are kindly accepted, and will probably be just filed away with a 
thank you.  Bug reports with fixes are indeed welcome.  

Complaints that "xxx" (some feature) doesn't work right will just be 
tossed away without reply.


RUNTIME NOTES:

I used the normal Unix directory names for library files.  \usr\local\lib\tcl,
\usr\local\lib\tk for standard UCB Tcl, and \usr\local\tclx\7.3a, 
\usr\local\tkx\3.6a for TclX.  Some library code was changed, particularly
TclX package library code.  The executables in the zip file unpack to
\usr\local\bin.  You could move these to where ever you want.

Filenames:  Inside of tcl, use forward slashes.  The C library takes
care of munging to backslashes.  But, of course, if you "exec" something
that expects a filename, you'll need (quoted) backslashes.  

A few other enviroment variables are needed:

set HOME=	where Tcl will expand ~, and looks for Tcl rc files there,
		e.g., tclsh.rc, tcl.rc, wish.rc
set GO32=	info for the GO32 dos extender
set GO32TMP=    where GO32 will create files for virtual memory
set TMPDIR=	compiler temp files

set TCL_LIBRARY=	if you want to override where you put the Tcl
			library code. 
set TZ=			if you want your timezone to appear correctly,
                        otherwise the library assumes EDT

These environment variables need forward slashes, e.g., SET TMPDIR=c:/

If you recompile the sources, you will need a set of environment
variables for DJ's GCC.  I've included a copy of my enviroment variables,
that I used for DJGPP.

I've only tested the executables on 486 cpus.  For 386 machines without
a 387 math cpu, the "emu387" file is supposed to provide floating point
emulation.  I've included it in \usr\local\bin. 


PORTING NOTES:

Base source was untarred from the normal Tcl distributions.  I did take
some working Tcl library code from my Unix installation (e.g. tcl.tlib)
instead of rebuilding it on MSDOS.

COMPILER & LIBRARIES

I used DJ Delorie's 1.11 distribution of GNU C 2.5.4 to compile the source.

The relevant zip files are available on  oak.oakland.edu:/pub/msdos/djgpp,
omnigate.clarkson.edu:/pub/msdos/djgpp,  and probably elsehere.  
Use archie for a site near you.

djeoe111.zip     (Minimum runtime stuff - required)
djdev111.zip     (Minimum development stuff - required)
gcc254bn.zip     (The C compiler - required)
gas211bn.zip     (The assembler - required)
bnu22bn.zip      (The linker etc - required)
bsn121bn.zip     (bison exe if you rebuild TclX from scratch)
mak369bn.zip     (make exe)
qddvx102.zip     (Desqview/X libraries for GNU C, X11 + sockets)


There's lots of other zip files: sources, docs, graphic libs, curses, flex,
etc.  You may want to grab more of these goodies for your own use.  

The final executables are made by appending the linker output to the
go32.exe program.  Thus, each executable has a copy of go32.exe, and runs
without other .exe support.

I unpacked all of the Delorie GNU files in c:\djgpp. 

I'm also including Delorie's README in the zip files.


TCL 7.3 SOURCE CHANGES

I configured the Makefile by hand.  The `all' target compiles all the source,
builds libtcl.a, and then links tclsh.exe.   MSDOS has a limit of 128 
characters on a command line.  To circumvent this problem with command line
defines, I made a file `tclmsdos.h' that contains most of the configuration
defines.

I hacked the "exec" command quite heavily (tclunixa.c).  MSDOS lacks Unix
styles pipes, but I wanted to make "exec" work mostly like Unix for 
stdin/stdout.  I used a system() library call, and redirect stdin/stdout
to temp files, writing and reading the temp files before and after
exec as needed.  This seems to work for most simple things; exec's output
(if not redirect) will come back as the interpreter result, and Tcl variables
can be used for stdin, e.g.:
		set dirlist [exec dir]
		set odout   [exec od -c << $dirlist]

I didn't try doing the same for "open" redirection.  "set fd [open |dir r]"
will fail because pipe() is just a dummy call in the C library.

Other places I had to hack were in tclunixu.c, so that Tcl_EvalFile wouldn't
complain if the amount of file read is less that the file's stat() size.  The
reason being MSDOS text lines are normally ended with CR NL, and the library
crunches this to just NL during read() unless you set _fmode. 

Other small changes were made to satisfy GNU C or DJ's C library.


TCLX 7.3a SOURCE CHANGES

Since one of TclX's main features is access to Unix system calls, you should
expect that much of that is missing or just doesn't work.  Some other
system calls are faked by the C library to return constant results, so
the TclX commands that invoke these system calls just return error.
A few other TclX system-type commands return "NOOP" if invoked.

TclX's top level Makefile is unfinished.  I customized src/Makefile and
tksrc/Makefile by hand.  Just as in UCB Tcl, I tweaked many items in 
tclxconf.h instead of passing cc command line arguments.  I also installed
TclX library code by hand.

Much of the porting effort was done to get TclX packages working, due to
the MSDOS 8 + 3, case insensitive filesnames.  Packages in MSDOS have an
extension of ".tli", with indexes of ".tnd".  This was really a pain to
track down, mostly in tclXlib.c.

Tclxunix.c was gutted for commands that have no meaning in MSDOS (nice,
alarm, chroot, etc.  Signal handling had to be excised from several
files, because of the way TclX handles signals.  

There's still quite a usable bit of code in TclX: echo, for_*, loop,
convertclock/fmtclock/getclock, sleep, scancontext, extra list commands,
keyed lists, ctype string commands, help.


TK 3.6 SOURCE CHANGES

What pleasant surprise!  Porting here was very easy.  A few things I
changed are:  Use a default display name of ":0.0" if none was
specified on the command line, add the defines as tkmsdos.h, and
added the patch to tkTextDisp.c recently posted (12/15/93).

The first time I type "wish" under Desqview/X and saw that familiar
beige window I was quite amazed.



TESTING:

Minimal, at best.  Anything that relies on Unix features won't work, but
the core Tcl tests pass fine.  Notable problems are: "expr", usual math
lib problems related to old BSD library code; "format", (same).

Wish and Wishx run the "widget" demo.  A small change was made to the
demo directory "tclindex" file because of MSDOS filenames.  


KNOWN PROBLEMS:

I can't seem to get wish/wishx to read commands from stdin when started in
a Desqview/X Dos window.