tclIndex files and freeWrap incompatibility...

The auto_mkindex command of Tcl generates an index of all the Tcl command procedures defined in Tcl files, and stores the index information in a file named tclIndex that is suitable for auto_load.

The tclIndex files generated by auto_mkindex command contain relative paths with '.' in them (Tested on of Tcl 8.5.14). An example line from tclIndex: 

set auto_index(::MyNameSpace::mycmd) [list source  [file join $dir . myscript.tcl]]

Applications freeWrap-ed with these tclIndex files fail to load/source files using relative paths. Note the following warning from freeWrap documentation:

You should use the paths to the files as they exist at the time of wrapping. Wrapping takes a "snapshot" of the file path for all wrapped files. Do not use relative paths to refer to wrapped files within the application since relative paths will not be found.

As a workaround, I modify tclIndex (using shell scripts) files to use [file normalize] command around [file join] command. The [file normalize] command  returns a normalized path. A normalized path is an absolute path which has all “../” and “./” removed. Also it is one which is in the “standard” format for the native platform. Hence, the modified tclIndex line looks like: 

set auto_index(::MyNameSpace::mycmd) [list source  [file normalize [file join $dir . myscript.tcl]]]

The shell command I used to automate the modification of tclIndex files is: 

sed -e 's/^set auto_index(.*) \[list source /& \[file normalize /' -e 's/\]$/\]\]/' -i tclIndex

Hope this helps you..... in case if you encounter this problem when using tclIndex files with freeWrap.