Updated Tcl Tk and Tix

Christopher Faylor insight@sources.redhat.com
Tue Jun 11 15:07:00 GMT 2002


Still talking about this, huh?

On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 12:34:05PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
>>The tcltk package in cygwin has some cygwin knowledge but it is not
>>complete.
>>
>>Maybe we can stop talking about this now?
>>
>>If you want to help, check out (via CVS) the tcl/tk 8.3 sources from
>>sources.redhat.com and offer your help in the insight mailing list for
>>tracking down problems.
>>
>>As I said previously, future packages will be based on this.  If you
>>want to improve things, stop complaining and start contributing.
>
>I believe Nicholas DOES want to help -- but was confused as to where to 
>start.

Then he should no longer be confused.  In fact, I would have guessed
that no one should have been confused after my initial response where I
identified myself as the current tcltk maintainer.  But my guess would
have been wrong.

>There's the cygwin official release, based on tcl/tk 8.0 with partial 
>cygwin support but MSWin GUI.  Because of Red Hat commercial concerns 
>vis a vis GNUpro, I imagine any official release of the 'tcl' and 'tk' 
>packages will ALWAYS use MSWin GUI's --- you don't want your GNUpro 
>customers to have to run the Xserver just to debug their code...

Why drag GNUpro into this?  We already have a tcltk package.  tk
obviously already uses the windows GUI.  I can't imagine a scenario
where I would consider dropping support for that.  There are *obviously*
people using it already.  Do we want the cygwin community to be able to
run insight on Windows without an X server?  Of course we do.  Cheesh.

>NEW INFO from cgf (of which neither I nor Nicholas were aware): However, 
>the cygwin support in that version of tcl/tk could be improved -- and 
>development in that direction, for tcl/tk-8.3 is happening on the 
>insight mailing list.  Gotcha.

It depends on what you mean by "new info".  I've mentioned problems
previously wrt gdb.  Maybe it was in cygwin-apps.  I don't remember.

Then, I mentioned, in this very thread, that 8.3 was already available
in the sources.redhat.com repository:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2002-06/msg00484.html

Maybe you'd have a point about this "new info" if you were responding
to my original message about the subject but, for some reason, you seem
to have ignored that one.  Apparently it takes multiple attempts to get
the point across.

(Hint for your next response:  "You never SAID that it was being handled
in the insight mailing list!  You only mentioned that there were strange
issues with tk and insight which were being tracked down."  I believe
that is how these interchanges normally go.)

>There's also the issue that some folks -- me, for instance -- would like 
>a tcl/tk that DOES work with X11 (e.g for integration with Gnome/KDE, 
>etc).  How should *that* be attempted?  perhaps 'tcl-x' and 'tk-x' 
>packages installed under /usr/X11R6/ ?  Should those be based on the 
>official tcl/tk 8.3 sources, or on the "fork" (if it is a fork) that is 
>being worked on by the insight-on-cygwin guys...and where should this X 
> version be discussed: also on the insight list, or on the cygwin-xfree 
>list, or here?  If not on the insight list, then how should the 
>tcl-x/tk-x and tcl/tk package development be coordinated?

FWIW, I have no plans on releasing an X version of tcltk.  It's premature
to consider it.

I suppose that the insight mailing list might be interested in seeing
patches, however.

>And of course, there's the all-important question: suppose all the 
>technical details were worked out wrt tck/tk-8.3 on cygwin and 
>tcl-x/tk-x-8.3 on cygwin.  Would the tcl-x/tk-x packages be accepted for 
>distribution?  (e.g. would all this just be a waste of Nicholas' time?)

I know that you are familiar with the mechanism for getting new packages
into the distribution.  I can't imagine why I'd object to someone releasing
X versions of tcl/tk libraries as long as they didn't interfere with the
packages that are already part of cygwin.

Whatever is offered should come from the same code base, however.

That's it for me.  If anyone wants to help with this, I'll see you over in
the insight mailing list.  I'm sure that the people there will be very
grateful to have people tracking down problems and will be willing to
discuss problems with people who are serious about solving them.

cgf

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