[Tcllib-devel] Trouble for Tcl 8.2/8.3, 64bit machines, seeking solution

[Andreas K. <and...@ac...>]

A number of packages have trouble on 64-bit machines, when running against
Tcl 8.2 or Tcl 8.3. There is no trouble with Tcl 8.4+. I believe this is
because of incomplete/buggy 64-bit support in the 8.2/8.3 cores.

This means that the testsuites go read all over for this combination and I
am getting tired of it.

The question, what to do ?

(1)	The packages currently declares Tcl 8.2 as their minium version.
	Move that up to Tcl 8.4.

	Disadvantage. Users of Tcl 8.2 on still wide-spread 32bit machines
	cannot use the packages any longer, at least not without editing
	the 'package require Tcl' statement.

	On the other hand, Tcl 8.2 is how old now ?

(2)	Like above, but make the Tcl 8.4 requirement dependent on detecting
	execution on a 64-bit machine (via tcl_platform(wordSize)).

Other ideas ? Preferences ? (I am currently favoring (2)).


An example of a failing test:

==== aes-fips-C.1e Test vector for AES-128 from FIPS-197 Appendix C.1 FAILED
==== Contents of test case:

    list [catch {
        set txt [binary format H* 00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff]
        set key [binary format H* 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f]
        set enc [aes::aes -mode ecb -dir enc -key $key $txt]
        binary scan $enc H* r
        set r
    } msg] $msg

---- Result was:
1 {integer value too large to represent as non-long integer}
---- Result should have been:
0 69c4e0d86a7b0430d8cdb78070b4c55a
==== aes-fips-C.1e FAILED



--
	Andreas Kupries <and...@Ac...>
	Developer @ http://www.ActiveState.com
	Tel: +1 778-786-1122