[tcltk-perl] RE: Re[2]: FAIL Tcl-Tk-0.80 i686-linux 2.4.18-14

[Jeff H. <je...@Ac...>]

> SR> This is on a RedHat 8.0 machine with the default Tcl and Tk (both 
> SR> version 8.3) installed from RPM:

IMO RedHat is a fairly crappy distro that has a poor package
maintenance record in places (in fact, they totally screwed up
things in RH9 for Tcl and Python by making incorrect core changes
without first contacting either core team - which are always
active and responsive).  RH9 was worse than 8, and Fedora just
isn't improving their record.  So that's my rant ...

That said, 8.3 didn't get "proper" support for Tk as a full
loadable package until 8.3.4 IIRC (release 2001).  I know that
all distros didn't add a pkgIndex.tcl file to Tk though, so you
might just need to add that.

In any case, I'd like to encourage use of 8.4 instead, and
perhaps add some warnings to that effect in Makefile.PL.  Hmmm,
on second thought, I want to *force* 8.4, as I am using several
8.4-isms in the Tk.pm code anyway.  It's been the stable release
since 2002 and is definitely in good shape now.  It also allows
some fancy stuff - just yesterday I got dll-based base kits
working.  This means all of Tcl/Tk + extensions can be housed in
a single dll (.so, whatever) that you use for your apps.

Soooo ... I'll probably be putting in code in the Makefile.PL and
runtime stuff to force the use of 8.4.  That's actually the case
to do things right anyway, I just didn't force it in the build
yet.  Using stubs (--usestubs), you can actually build against
8.3 and run properly against 8.4, but we should just force the
8.4 issue as early as possible (no surprises).

The easiest thing to do when 8.4 isn't the default on your path
(otherwise you shouldn't need to do) is to use the --tclsh or
--tclconfig options to the Tcl Makefile.PL.

Jeff