Re: [TCLCORE] Advice requested regarding [send] on macOS

[Marc C. <cul...@gm...>]

Apple does provide IPC mechanisms.  I don't know whether they would be
suitable, but I am pretty sure they would.  However, the current
implementation of [send] does not attempt to use them.  If you look at the
top of macosx/TkMacOSXSend.c you will see this very old comment (note that
"gestalts" no longer exist in macOS):

 *      This file provides procedures that implement the "send" command,
 *      allowing commands to be passed from interpreter to interpreter. This
 *      current implementation for the Mac has most functionality stubbed
out.
 *
 *      The current plan, which we have not had time to implement, is for
the
 *      first Wish app to create a gestalt of type 'WIsH'. This gestalt will
 *      point to a table, in system memory, of Tk apps. Each Tk app, when it
 *      starts up, will register their name, and process ID, in this table.
 *      This will allow us to implement "tk appname".
 *
 *      Then the send command will look up the process id of the target app
in
 *      this table, and send an AppleEvent to that process. The AppleEvent
 *      handler is much like the do script handler, except that you have to
 *      specify the name of the tk app as well, since there may be many
 *      interps in one wish app, and you need to send it to the right one.
 *
 *      Implementing this has been on our list of things to do, but what
with
 *      the demise of Tcl at Sun, and the lack of resources at Scriptics it
 *      may not get done for awhile. So this sketch is offered for the brave
 *      to attempt if they need the functionality...

- Marc


On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 1:17 AM Donal Fellows <
don...@ma...> wrote:

> I would be very startled if it *isn't* the exact same issue, a
> combination of needing a suitable IPC mechanism for doing the discovery and
> communications, and system policy restricting access to such things even if
> they exist.
>
> Donal.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Erik Leunissen via Tcl-Core <tcl...@li...>
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 16, 2025 07:12
> *To:* Marc Culler <cul...@gm...>
> *Cc:* tcl...@li... <tcl...@li...>
> *Subject:* Re: [TCLCORE] Advice requested regarding [send] on macOS
>
> Related to this matter: I noticed (in a debug statement issued by me for
> execution at Github) that
> interpreters in another process are not returned by [winfo interps] on
> macOS. (See the script below
> to verify that). I'm suspecting that this is for the
> very same reason/cause. Can you please give your view about that
> (confirm/deny if
> possible) ?
>
>