This is the pgtcl-ng Source Release README
Last updated for pgtcl-1.5.3 on 2006-08-30
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 a new
revision of the pgtcl interface.

This is a source release.  With appropriate development tools on a compatible
platform, you can build pgtcl on your system.

The full documentation for pgtcl-ng is available at the site listed in the
header of this file. This release only contains the minimal documentation
for building and installing.

A binary release of pgtcl-ng for Windows is available on the site listed in
the header of this file. If you are using pgtcl on Windows, you should
consider using the binary release. For more information about the Windows
binary release and its requirements, see the README.txt file inside the
release.


CONTENTS:

    README ...................  This file
    COPYRIGHT ................  License file (Open Source)
    INSTALL ..................  Building and installing instructions
    NEWS .....................  Release information and new features
    ChangeLog* ...............  Source change history files
    README.historical ........  Historical READMEs from project predecessors
    extra/ ...................  Directory containing pgtclsh shell sources
  Plus the source files and configure/build support files.


REQUIREMENTS:

Refer to the INSTALL file for details. For Unix-like systems, the minimum
levels are PostgreSQL-7.4 and Tcl/Tk 8.3.1 (but 8.4.4 or higher is
recommended). For building on Windows systems, you need PostgreSQL-7.4.1 or
higher, ActiveState ActiveTcl 8.4.5, and Borland C++ Builder 5.5.


RELEASE ISSUES - all platforms:

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

+ This version of pgtcl is substantially changed from pre-1.5.x versions,
  but should be compatible, unless undocumented or incorrect behavior of
  previous versions was relied on in an application.  Undocumented behavior
  of some commands changed.  Some commands now check their arguments more
  rigorously than before. Other commands, specifically some of the Large
  Object commands, throw a Tcl error if an error occurs, where their previous
  behavior was undocumented but often involved returning a negative value.
  Additionally, error messages may have changed. Another change was to
  remove undocumented return values from result array assignment commands.

+ If you are looking for the Tcl shells with PostgreSQL extensions (pgtclsh
  and pgtksh), look in the "extra/" directory. The README file there explains
  why you might be better off not using them, though.


RELEASE ISSUES - Windows:

+ 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 - no Unix Domain Sockets. So a hostname (or IP
  address) must be provided when connecting. This should not be a problem,
  since the PostgreSQL server doesn't run on Windows (not counting Cygwin
  ports), so your database server is likely to be across the network anyway.
  If you do actually have a PostgreSQL server running on the same host,
  you need to specify host=localhost or host=127.0.0.1 to connect to it.

+ The Windows release is not built using "stubs", so it will only run with
  a specific version of Tcl. (The reason is that Pgtcl-ng libraries are
  compiled with Borland C, and ActiveTcl is compiled with MSVC, and there is
  no way to use the MSVC stubs library from Borland C.)

RELEASE ISSUES - MacOS

+ There was a report of success building pgtcl-ng on MacOS X 10.3.6.
  See the INSTALL file for more information. Pgtcl-ng has not been tested
  by the developer on MacOS.