Cygwin, tcl/tk, and "native"

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Jean-Sebastien Trottier wrote (heavily [snip]ped):

> On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 05:02:32PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
> > Jean-Sebastien Trottier wrote:
> >
> > >Although (I think) it would be possible to have 2 Tk DLL's ("Cygwin, X"
> > >vs "Cygwin, GDI"), I like Charles Wilson's idea to try and use W11:
> >
> > Not my idea -- it was Igor's. ('tis a good one, tho, if you can make it
> > work.)  However, SteveO packages libW11 together with rxvt; it is not a
> > separate package. (and his build technique to get it to work
> > is...unique) So, if you need to add stuff to libW11 and need specific
> > header files, there may be issues.  You'll need to work with SteveO and
> > perhaps split libW11 to a separate project and package.
>
> Sorry for misquoting... I keep notes to track who said what... sometimes
> I copy/paste the wrong thing/person... My bad.

No problem, as long as the idea gets through.

> I've studied the rxvt/W11 source... the only "unique build technique" I
> can find in there is the "fake" libX11.a wrapper.
>
> Linking my cygtk8.4.dll against it uncovers 50 unresolved functions...
> So, there will be substantial work involved to expand W11 to support
> these 50 new functions. Will take some time, but I'm up to the challenge!
>
> Maybe SteveO can lend some time...?

Actually, it's "simply" a matter of finding the corresponding places in
the GDI version of libtk and copying the code into the implementation of
those functions.  The "simply" above is supposed to reflect the simplicity
of the idea -- it'll still take substantial effort to first locate and
then generalize the corresponding pieces of code enough to make into the X
protocol functions.

FWIW, the resulting functions don't have to cover all the corner cases or
support all of the functionality -- only as much of it as Tk uses, just
enough to get it running.

> > BTW, I interpret cgf's statement
> >
> > "If someone wants to take over gdb + tcl/tk maintainership that's
> > fine, though.  That is gold-star worthy."
> >
> > to mean that cgf is willing to relinquish maintaining gdb/insight AND
> > tcl/tk -- but not just tcl/tk alone.  It's a package deal; you'd need
> > to accept gdb maintainership too.  Is that a correct interpretation,
> > cgf, or is there a third choice: you'd give up maintaining tcl/tk but
> > continue maintaining gdb SO LONG AS the tcl/tk maintainer's changes
> > don't force you to do more than minimal work to keep gdb up-to-snuff?
>
> I like the third option... I'm not going to use gdb as much as Chris so
> I think he is in a better position to maintain it.
>
> However, I agree to take care of cutting the first stable gdb +
> "Cygwin, W11" Tcl/Tk version.

Yay.

> I would also agree to co-maintain gdb with Chris and to fix any
> Tcl/Tk-related issues.

Double yay.

> As for fully taking over maintenance of gdb, I'm not totally against it
> but I guess we could discuss the details later...

Yep, since the list is reasonably supportive of the idea, can you simply
ITP the new Tcl/Tk packages?  A split into Tcl and Tk, as Charles
mentioned, would be nice.

BTW, Steve O, are you reading this?

If Steve doesn't reply, we should probably Cc one of the later thread
messages to him...

Thanks,
	Igor
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