5.8. Tcl-8.4.9

This package and the next two (Expect and DejaGNU) are installed to support running the test suites for GCC and Binutils. Installing three packages for testing purposes may seem excessive, but it is very reassuring, if not essential, to know that the most important tools are working properly. Even if the test suites are not run in this chapter (they are not mandatory), these packages are required to run the test suites in Chapter 6.

Prepare Tcl for compilation:

cd unix
./configure --prefix=/tools

Build the package:

make

To test the results, issue: TZ=UTC make test. The Tcl test suite is known to experience failures under certain host conditions that are not fully understood. Therefore, test suite failures here are not surprising, and are not considered critical. The TZ=UTC parameter sets the time zone to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but only for the duration of the test suite run. This ensures that the clock tests are exercised correctly. Details on the TZ environment variable are provided in Chapter 7.

Install the package:

make install

Set a variable containing the full path of the current directory. The next package, Expect, will use this variable to find Tcl's headers.

cd ..
export TCLPATH=`pwd`

Now make a necessary symbolic link:

ln -sv tclsh8.4 /tools/bin/tclsh