This is the pgtcl-ng Windows Binary Release README
Last updated for pgtclng-1.7.1 on 2009-11-25
The project home page is: http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgtclng/
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OVERVIEW:

Pgtcl is the Tcl interface for the PostgreSQL Database Management System.
It is a loadable Tcl module implementing commands which allow an
application to interact with a PostgreSQL database. Pgtcl-ng is the "next
generation" implementation of Pgtcl.

This is a binary release for Windows. Provided your system meets the
requirements below, you can use this without compiling or building.

This release uses the Tcl "stubs" mechanism, which should allow it to be
used with any version of Tcl 8.x. It has been tested with ActiveState
ActiveTcl 8.4.19.2 and 8.5.8. See REQUIREMENTS below.

This release was built with, and includes, the PostgreSQL-8.4.1 run-time
client library libpq. The release was tested on Windows XP SP3, connecting
to PostgreSQL-8.4.1, PostgreSQL-8.3.8, and PostgreSQL-8.2.14 servers
running on Linux.

The source release and full documentation for pgtcl-ng are available at the
site listed in the header of this file. Even though you may freely use
and redistribute this binary release in accordance with the open-source
license in COPYING, we suggest you also download the source release - just
because you can.


REQUIREMENTS:

 +  ActiveState ActiveTcl 8.4.19.2 or 8.5.8 (see http://www.activestate.com )
       These are the tested versions. Other patch levels of 8.4.x and 8.5.x
       should work. NOTE: New with this release, the Pgtcl-ng binary release
       for Windows uses the Tcl "stubs" mechanism which provides independence
       from specific versions of Tcl. The same release of Pgtcl-ng should work 
       with all Tcl-8.5 and Tcl-8.4 versions, and perhaps older versions too.

       If you have trouble with the "stubs" release, you can find non-stubs
       releases for pgtclng-1.7.0 on the downloads page. There is one for
       Tcl-8.4 and one for Tcl-8.5, and they each only work with the
       corresponding version of Tcl. NOTE: If you have trouble with the stubs
       releases, please contact the project maintainer or open a bug report.
       Unless there is negative feedback, the intent is not to release
       further non-stubs releases for Windows.

 +  A PostgreSQL database server somewhere on your network.  This has been
       tested with PostgreSQL-8.4.1, PostgreSQL-8.3.8, and PostgreSQL-8.2.14
       servers. It should also work with older versions.  You will not need
       any client-side PostgreSQL files, other than the DLL included with
       the pgtcl-ng release.


CONTENTS:

    README.txt  ..............  This file
    COPYING ..................  License file (Open Source)
    libpgtcl.dll .............  The pgtcl loadable library
    blibpq.dll ...............  The PostgreSQL libpq loadable library
    pkgIndex.tcl .............  Tcl package index file


KNOWN BUGS and LIMITATIONS - Windows Release:

+ Changes to the connection control environment variables (such as PGHOST,
  PGDATABASE) are not seen once the DLL is loaded. This is either a Windows
  DLL environment variable issue, a Tcl environment variable issue, or both.
  This should not be a problem, since environment variables are mostly for
  setting outside your application.

+ Only TCP/IP is supported, not Unix Domain Sockets. So a hostname (or IP
  address) must be provided when connecting. If you are trying to connect
  to a PostgreSQL server running on your Windows PC, you need to specify
  host=localhost or host=127.0.0.1 to connect to it.


RELEASE ISSUES:

+ Pgtclng-1.6.2 contains a fix for a character set encoding issue which
  occurs if you are using non-ASCII data with certain database encodings.
  There was no problem if your database used UTF8 (Unicode) encoding,
  but if it was a different encoding such as Latin1, there could be
  problems translating data between Tcl and PostgreSQL. This only
  occurs on Windows and affects all releases before Pgtclng-1.6.2.

+ This package contains some experimental commands which are subject to
  change. More details can be found in the reference manual.

+ Pgtcl-ng for Windows, as well as the included PostgreSQL LibPQ library,
  were built with the Borland C++ Builder 5.5 command-line tools.


INSTALLATION and USAGE:

Refer to the reference manual for more details. Here is a quick summary
of the two most common ways to install and use this release:

Option 1) Package Require

 (a) Create a new directory "Pgtcl1.7" under the Tcl library directory.
     For example, this might be: "c:\Program Files\Active Tcl\lib".
     Note: you can use the 3-part version if you prefer: "Pgtcl1.7.0".

 (b) Copy the files: libpgtcl.dll, blibpq.dll, and pkgIndex.tcl into that
     directory.

 (c) You application uses: "package require Pgtcl"
     Note that this works because of a modified pkgIndex.tcl file, which
     allows Windows to find the dependent libpq.dll library.

Option 2) Direct Loading:

 (a) Copy blibpq.dll into a directory on your PATH, or into the Tcl "bin"
     directory. This is where it needs to be so Windows can find it.

 (b) Copy libpgtcl.dll into any directory where it is convenient for
     your application, or into a directory on your PATH, or into the Tcl
     "bin" directory.

 (c) Your application uses:  "load .../libpgtcl.dll"
     where ".../" is a path prefix which you need to supply if libpgtcl is
     not installed on PATH or in the Tcl "bin" directory.

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