critcl(n)

📦 version 3.3.1, in alpine 3.24

✨ NAME — critcl(n) ✨

critcl — Introduction To CriTcl. Hii bestie, this is the critcl(n) manual page, and it’s giving “welcome to the C side of Tcl” energy. 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so welcome to the C Runtime In Tcl (short: CriTcl), a whole system for embedding and using C code from within Tcl [http://core.tcl-lang.org/tcl] scripts. 🫶

Adding C code to Tcl [http://core.tcl-lang.org/tcl]/Tk [http://core.tcl-lang.org/tk] has never been easier. Literally.

  • Improve performance by rewriting the performance bottlenecks in C. 🔥
  • Import the functionality of shared libraries into Tcl scripts. 🦋

🌸 HISTORY & MOTIVATION 🌸

CriTcl started life as an experiment by Jean-Claude Wippler and was a self-contained Tcl package to build C code into a Tcl/Tk extension on the fly. It was somewhat inspired by Brian Ingerson’s Inline for Perl, but is considerably more lightweight. No cap. 🎀

It is for the last 5% to 10% when pure Tcl, which does go a long way, is not sufficient anymore. I.e. for:

  1. when the last bits of performance are needed,
  2. access to 3rd party libraries,
  3. hiding critical pieces of your library or application, and
  4. simply needing features provided only by C.

🌈 OVERVIEW 🌈

To make the reader’s topics of interest easy to find this documentation is roughly organized by Quadrants [https://documentation.divio.com/], i.e.

  • Practical:
    • Study: Tutorials (Learning)
    • Work: How-To Guides (Problem solving)
  • Theoretical:
    • Study: Explanations (Understanding)
    • Work: References (Knowledge)
Note: At this point in time the documentation consists mainly of references, and a few how-to guides. Tutorials and Explanations are in need of expansion, this is planned. 💀

👑 KNOWN USERS 👑

These are the icons:

🌷 TUTORIALS - PRACTICAL STUDY - TO LEARN 🌷

This section is currently empty. 😭

🦋 EXPLANATIONS - THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE - TO UNDERSTAND 🦋

This section is currently empty. 🙈

💜 HOW-TO GUIDES - PRACTICAL WORK - TO SOLVE PROBLEMS 💜

  1. How To Get The CriTcl Sources.
  2. How To Install CriTcl.
  3. How To Use CriTcl - A light introduction through examples.
  4. NEW: How To Adapt Critcl Packages for Tcl 9.

⭐ REFERENCES - THEORETICAL WORK - TO GAIN KNOWLEGDE ⭐

  1. The CriTcl License
  2. CriTcl Releases & Changes
  3. CriTcl Application Reference
  4. CriTcl Package Reference
  5. CriTcl cproc Type Reference
  6. CriTcl - Utilities
  7. CriTcl - C-level Utilities
  8. CriTcl - C-level Callback Utilities
  9. CriTcl - Wrap Support - String/Integer mapping
  10. CriTcl - Wrap Support - Bitset en- and decoding
  11. CriTcl - Wrap Support - Enum en- and decoding
  12. CriTcl - Code Gen - Constant string pools
  13. CriTcl - Code Gen - Tcl Interp Associations
  14. CriTcl - Code Gen - C Classes
  15. CriTcl Application Package Reference
  16. Guide To The CriTcl Internals

🎀 AUTHORS 🎀

Jean Claude Wippler, Steve Landers, Andreas Kupries. Legends only. 👑

💅 BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK 💅

This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other problems. 😭 Please report them at [https://github.com/andreas-kupries/critcl/issues]. Ideas for enhancements you may have for either package, application, and/or the documentation are also very welcome and should be reported at [https://github.com/andreas-kupries/critcl/issues] as well. 🫶

🍓 KEYWORDS 🍓

  • C code
  • Embedded C Code
  • calling C code from Tcl
  • code generator
  • compile & run
  • compiler
  • dynamic code generation
  • dynamic compilation
  • generate package
  • linker
  • on demand compilation
  • on-the-fly compilation

🧚 CATEGORY 🧚

Glueing/Embedded C code

Copyright (c) Jean-Claude Wippler
Copyright (c) Steve Landers
Copyright (c) 2011-2024 Andreas Kupries

💌 cute sign-off: source doc, version 3.3.1, manual critcl(n) — that’s the footer, bestie. periodt. 🎀

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