Automated Wrapping of a C++ Class Library into Tcl

In this paper we describe an approach to wrapping a preexisting C++ class library into the interpreted Tcl environment. Specifically, we look at our efforts over the past two years to add the Tcl interpreted environment on top of the Visualization Toolkit which consists of over three hundred C++ classes. We address how we overcame the fundamental issues involved in wrapping existing C++ code and what limitations we had to accept. We contrast our approach to other Tcl object oriented extensions such as Object Tcl and [incr Tcl] and explain why they were not suitable. We conclude by looking at future directions for our work.