#176 very bad problem while sourcing the file "AlphaPostGuiStartup.tcl"

[Jonathan E. Guyer]

Error in "AlphaPostGuiStartup.tcl"
There was a very bad problem while sourcing the file "AlphaPostGuiStartup.tcl".

Alpha will probably not function properly. See error in log file /Users/guyer/Library/Logs/AlphaTcl/coreStartupErrors.

There is no /Users/guyer/Library/Logs/AlphaTcl/coreStartupErrors file

Actions to reproduce:

• Clean installation of Vega_rc6
• Check for ticket #172 and see that the menu items don't get key combos when option is held down
• Choose Alpha > Global Setup > Update Alpha > AlphaTcl Developer Checkout
• Choose relaunch
• Error occurs on relaunch

[Bernard Desgraupes]

I can reproduce this with a pristine Alpha version 9.0rc6. This happens because the indices ought to be rebuilt and unfortunately I was too quick in resetting the hardCodedCounter to 0 in prevision of the forthcoming release.
In other words, could you increase manually the hardCodedCounter in the file Tcl/SystemCode/Init/AlphaVersionInfo.tcl inside the bundle. Set it to a high value (say 10) to force a rebuild of the indices ? I hope it fixes the issue (it did for me).

[Jonathan E. Guyer]

Increasing hardCodedCounter in Alpha.app/Contents/Resources/Libraries/AlphaTcl/Tcl/SystemCode/Init/AlphaVersionInfo.tcl does not provoke indices to be rebuilt and I still get the error dialog. I tried

• after getting the error dialog
• after a clean install and AlphaTcl Developer checkout, but before relaunching
• before the AlphaTcl Developer checkout (I didn't expect this to work, but thought I'd cover my bases)

[Bernard Desgraupes]

Thank you for trying again. I think this is fixed now.
For the benefit of future generations and historians of Alpha development, here are some technical explanations: when a developer checkout is performed, the AlphaTcl library is entirely replaced inside the bundle so that the tclindex files are wiped out. Normally Alpha would detect this at launch time and trigger a rebuild. Alas, when it executes the proc alpha::startupAlphaTcl, among other tasks, it checks that the Tcl version is not too old. To do this, it calls the command alpha::package vcompare which has not yet been loaded and, since there are no tclindex files, it can't find it. This proc is defined in the file postguiPkgsDeclare.tcl which is loaded a few lines after that (too late...).
The fix is to source postguiPkgsDeclare.tcl before alpha::package is invoked.
Changes committed to the repository (rev. 1514).

[Joachim Kock]

I can't get this to work. (I didn't try developer check-out since July.)
I download a new Alpha and copy it to Applications, open it, do developer check-out, quit.
Open the copy from the diskimage and use it to edit the AlphaVersionInfo.tcl in the bundle in Applications, and set hardcoded counter to 1000. Quit, and fire up the new Alpha from Applications. The indices are being rebuilt, but after that it still gives the core start-up error.

[Bernard Desgraupes]

Hi Joachim,
I have been looking into this. I took the exact same steps you describe and I don't get any error. It works for me.

[Bernard Desgraupes]

Hi Joachim,
Thinking more about this, the core startup error you see is certainly a different one (than described in this ticket) and it is probably the indication that the core of the application must be recompiled. I've been observing something similar after a Developer checkout on another machine with an Alpha whose core was out of date: a recent new linkvar (printerFont) was the culprit because linkvars assume some sort of link between the core and the library.