Tcljava

Sun's Tcl/Java interface, available at ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/tcljava0.4.tar.gz can be used to create a shared library that is loaded by the Java byte interpreter. This shared library has Java classes that allow the user to evaluate Tcl commands. We created a GNU autoconf file that allows tcljava to be easily configured.

We are particularly interested in combining Itcl and Java for use in the Tycho project.

Downloads

Installing Tcljava under Unix

1. Install tcl and tk by configuring with the --enable-shared option.
2. You can either download a patched version of Tcljava (tcljava0.4a), or grab the original Tcljava interfaceftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/tcljava0.4.tar.gz from Sun and then patch it with the patch below.
   If you downloaded tcljava0.4a, then skip to step 5 below.
3. If you are using the unpatched Sun tcljava0.4 sources, then grab the tcljava0.4a.patch, file which contains the following new files:

   configure.in

   Autoconf source file

   configure

   Shell script to run that configures the installation

   makefile.in

   Makefile template that configure uses to create makefile

   makefile.vc

   Microsoft Visual C++ makefile for NT.

   The patch also contains a change to the following file:

   TclTest.java

   Apparently, in jdk1.1, The package sun.tools.zip does not exist. This package was present in jdk1.0.2. If you try to compile TclTest.java with the jdk1.1 javac, you will get

   TclTest.java:13: Package sun.tools.zip not found in import.
   import sun.tools.zip.*;
   

   
   Fixed a bug where if the user hit the demo button, java would crash because a pathname was hardwired in.

4. Untar the Sun tcljava0.4tar file and then patch it with

   patch < tcljava0.4a.patch
   

   while in the directory above tcljava0.4 directory.
5. configure has a number of options to set the paths. You can use: configure -help to see them all.
   You will probably need to specify at least three arguments:

   --with-java

   You will probably need to use the --with-java option to tell configure where your Java installation is. If you java installation is at /opt/jdk1.1, then you would use .

   If your tcltk installation is not installed in the default location (/usr/local), then you may need to call configure with other arguments.

Installing TclJava under NT

The binaries contain hardwired paths, and are only available for testing purposes. If you have problems with this tar file, try building from scratch below.

1. Download tcljava0.4a.nt.tar.gz
2. Install it in your c: drive. The tar file consists of files in two directories: c:\Program Files\Itcl2.2 and c:\tcljava0.4
3. Download and install the Java Development Kit from http://www.javasoft.com. I installed it in c:\jdk1.1. You will need to set your Path and the CLASSPATH environment variable according to the JDK instructions.
4. Set your path to include c:\Program Files\Itcl2.2\Bin
5. To run the tcljava interface, I had to set the TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY environment variables. Under NT, I brought up the control panel, selected the System Icon and then the Environment Tab.
   I set TK_LIBRARY to c:/Program Files/Itcl2.2/Lib/Itcl/Tk4.2
   I set TCL_LIBRARY to c:/Program Files/Itcl2.2/Lib/Itcl/Tcl7.6
6. Start up the tcljava interface with the sample file:

   cd c:\tcljava0.4a
   java TclTest
   

Building Tcljava under NT

I believe that to Install Tcljava under NT, you must rebuild Tcl from scratch. If you do not rebuild Tcl from scratch, then when you try to link with the tcl and tk dll, VC++ will complain about invalid objects.

Why not gcc?

I don't think that java native methods can be compiled under gcc, if you run javah, then the .c file that is generated has a line like:

__declspec(dllexport) stack_item *Java_tcl_Interp_native_0005feval_stub(stack_item *_P_,structexecenv *_EE_) {

	tcl_classes.c: In function `__declspec':
	tcl_classes.c:8: syntax error before `{'

Installation procedure

1. Download the Tcl/Tk sources. Locally, we use Itcl, an object oriented extension to Tcl/Tk, so these instructions are based on Itcl sources. The Itcl2.2 sources can be obtained from: http://www.tcltk.com/itcl
2. I untar'd the Itcl2.2 sources in c:\Itcl2.2
3. The Itcl2.2 sources need several fixes the the makefile.vc files. The itcl2.2a.tar.gz gzipped tar file contains the appropriate fixes. You should grab itcl2.2a.tar.gz and untar it over the Itcl2.2 distribution. itcl2.2a.tar.gz contains the following fixes:
   1. tk4.2/win/makefile.vc needed the $(IWISH) rule changed to $(WISH).
   2. makefile.vc needed:

      	TKLIBDIR	= $(TKDIR)\Win
      	

   3. itk/win/makefile.vc needed

      	TARGET_DOC_ITK	= $(TARGET_DOC)\Itk
      	

   4. Also, I fixed the installation rules so that make install will not fail if it is run a second time because mkdir fails.
4. Build and install the Itcl2.2 distribution with:

   cd c:\Itcl2.2
   nmake -f makefile.vc dist
   nmake -f makefile.vc install
   

   Note that if you have already previously installed Tcl/Tk, you should remove any preexisting Tcl/Tk libraries, such as tcl76.dll or tcl76i.dll
   If you have the problem where everytime you run nmake, all the files are rebuilt, then try using the Cygnus chmod and touch commands to update the mod times on all the files. The problem I noticed was that many of the files are dated Dec 31, 1969.
5. Download the Java Development Kit from http://www.javasoft.com. I installed it in c:\jdk1.1
6. Download tcljava0.4a (gzipped tar file). This file is based on tcljava0.4, but it has been patched for use with jdk1.1, configure and NT. I installed this as c:\tcljava0.4a
   I had to make the following changes to tcljava0.4:
   1. tkJava.c was failing to compile with lots of problems in rpcdce.h. The following small test program fails to compile:

      	#include 
      	#include 
      	int foo() { return 1;}
      	

      The rule I used to test this was:

      	tkj.obj:
      		cl -Ic:\jdk1.1\include -Ic:\jdk1.1\include\win32 \
      		-I$(TOOLS32)\include $(TK_INCLUDES)  \
      		/c tst.c
      	

      The fix is to insert

      /* NT4.0, vc++: If you don't undef Status, then rpcdce.h won't compile -cxh */
      #ifdef _MSC_VER
      #undef Status
      #endif
      	

      right before the line that includes oobj.h.
   2. TclTest.java JDK1.1 under Windows does not include the sun.tools.zip package, so I had to comment out a number of lines that tried to use it before the TclTest.java class would compile
   3. When linking, I got an error about perror not being defined, so I modified the makefile.vc to not define EXECHACK
   4. TclTest.java When trying to run java TclTest, I kept getting errors about create not being found. The fix was to load the library at the top of main instead of in the TclTest static section.
7. I compiled the tcljava interface with:

   cd c:\tcljava0.4a
   nmake -f makefile.vc all
   

8. To run the tcljava interface, I had to set the TCL_LIBRARY and TK_LIBRARY environment variables. Under NT, I brought up the control panel, selected the System Icon and then the Environment Tab.
   I set TK_LIBRARY to c:/Program Files/Itcl2.2/Lib/Itcl/Tk4.2
9. The command to actually run the interface is

   java TclTest
   

Troubleshooting tcljava under NT

The instruction at "0x1000f36b" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The
memory could not be "read".

bash$ java TclTest
java.lang.UnknownError: Can't find a usable tk.tcl in the following directories:
 
   {c:/Program Files/Itcl2.2/Lib/Itcl/Tk4.2/tk.tcl} . c:/tk4.2 ./lib/itcl/tk4.2
 c:/tk4.2/library c:/library
This probably means that Tk wasn't installed properly.

        at tcl.TkApplication.tkInit(TkApplication.java:39)
        at TclTest.main(TclTest.java:152)
bash$