Distributing extensions to STk

From: David Fox <fox_at_GRAPHICS.CS.NYU.EDU>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 94 20:16:39 -0500

It is quite easy to extend STk using the instructions in the
documentation. What is not so easy is writing and distributing an
extension to STk in such a way that it is easy for other people to
take and install, and in such a way that it is easy to maintain the
software for multiple architectures on the same file system. There
are several reasons for this:

1. The standard install procedure doesn't install all the necessary
   librarys, only libstk.a. It should install libtk.a, libtcl.a, and
   libgmp.a as well, but to avoid conflicts with the regular tk and
   tcl libraries these should be merged into libstk.a.

2. The stk include files are not placed in the installation directory;
   these are needed to compile extended applications.

3. The stk binary, stk-bin, is put in the same directory regardless of
   what type of CPU it was compiled for, *and* its path is hard coded
   into the launcher shell file.

I would recommend installing the libraries and stk-bin executable in
a subdirectory of /usr/local/lib, using uname to construct a name
which is machine dependent, e.g.

   libdir=/usr/local/lib/`uname -m`-`uname -s`

Uname can then be used in the stk shell script to locate the correct
subdirectory. Also, the include files should be installed in
/usr/local/include/stk. This would make my life easier - as it is
I have to repackage STk for distribution with my software.
Received on Sun Nov 13 1994 - 02:24:29 CET