Tensored Over Abelian Groups? Suppose I have an category additive category C (i.e. the hom sets are enriched in abelian groups and there are finite direct sums). Suppose further that C has cokernels. Then I can make C tensored over finitely presentable Abelian groups by the following ad hoc construction:
First define $\mathbb{Z}^n \otimes X := \oplus_n X$. Now given a finitely presentable abelian group A, choose a presentation, i.e. realize $A$ as the cokernel of $f:\mathbb{Z}^r \to \mathbb{Z}^g$. Define $A \otimes X$ as the cokernel of the induced map:
$\mathbb{Z}^r \otimes X \to \mathbb{Z}^g \otimes X$
My questions: Is there a way to do the same thing which feels more canonical and less ad hoc? Under what conditions will C be tensored over all abelian groups?
 A: This question feels a little meta-mathematical; I'm not sure whether you mean a construction that is less ad-hoc, or some description of the properties of said object that makes it clear that it's not an ad-hoc object.  Leonid gave a description in the latter terms above.
One construction is that you can take as an index category I the category of finitely generated free abelian groups F equipped with a basis and a map F → A, with morphisms being commuting triangles that ignore the basis.  Then A⊗X is the colimit of F⊗X as F ranges over I.  (You need choices of basis in order to define a functor, and this assumes that you actually have a direct sum functor.)
A related description is that if C is your category, D is the category of finitely generated abelian groups, and E is the category of finitely generated free abelian groups with a basis (and maps ignoring the basis), then I'd like to say that you have a diagram of functors
C×D ← C×E → C
given on the left by forgetting and on the right by tensoring, and your desired "tensor product" functor is a left Kan extension C×D → C.
A: Here is a general context for the same answer.  Let V be a bicomplete symmetric monoidal closed category such that the underlying-set functor $\hom_V(I,-)$ is conservative, where I is the unit object, and which is "extremally well-copowered" in the sense that the isomorphism classes of extremal epimorphisms out of any object form a set.  If C is a V-enriched category whose underlying ordinary category is cocomplete, then C is tensored over V.  This is Prop. 3.46 in Kelly's book "Basic concepts of enriched category theory", http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/reprints/articles/10/tr10abs.html
In particular, V = abelian groups satisfies these conditions, as does V = R-modules.  The "extremally well-copowered" condition is quite mild, but conservativity of the underlying-set functor is quite strong and fails in many other cases.
A: Given an object $X$ in an additive category $C$ and an abelian group $A$, define the object $A\otimes X$ in $C$ by the rule $Hom_C(A\otimes X,\:Y) = Hom_{Ab}(A,Hom_C(X,Y))$, where $Ab$ denotes the category of abelian groups.  If arbitrary direct sums and cokernels (arbitrary colimits, in other words) exist in an additive category $C$, the tensor product $A\otimes X$ exists in $C$ for any abelian group $A$ and any $X\in C$.  It can be constructed just as you describe in your question, except that finite direct sums should be replaced with infinite direct sums.
A: Incidentally, this is part of a more general story about algebraic theories and relates to Tall-Wraith monoids (surprise, surprise).
Take an algebraic theory, say $V$, (which we identify with its category of models in Set) and a category $D$ with "sufficient structure".  Then we can consider co-$V$-objects in $D$.  These represent covariant functors $D \to V$.  Let $H$ be such.  Now if we take a co-$V$-object in $V$, say $B$, then by composition we get a covariant functor $D \to V \to V$.  Under the "sufficient structure" assumption on $D$, representability is equivalent to having a left adjoint.  As both $D \to V$ and $V \to V$ are representable, both have left adjoints.  Thus their composition has a left adjoint and so is representable.  Hence there is a co-$V$-algebra object representing $B_* H_*$ which we may as well write as $B \otimes H$.  Lots of obvious naturality then implies that there is a corresponding bifunctor $VV^c \times DV^c \to DV^c$.  In the particular case that $D = V$ we see that $VV^c$ is monoidal - which is the starting point of the construction of Tall-Wraith $V$-monoids - and more naturality then implies that the bifunctor $VV^c \times DV^c \to DV^c$ is an action of $VV^c$ on $DV^c$.
This generalises even further to give a - slightly odd-looking - action of $VV^c$ on the category of $V$-objects in $D$.
In the specific case in question, $V$ is the category of abelian groups and as $D$ is an abelian category, every object in $D$ is automatically a co-$V$-object in $D$.
(Bits of this story are in the Hunting of the Hopf Ring, other bits will be in a forthcoming paper with Sarah Whitehouse on Tall-Wraith monoids.)
