#66 auto_load_file function not found in TclX 8.4

[Larry W. Virden]

I am using the TclX 8.4 CVS head with Tcl 8.5.19 and 8.6. I type:

$ tclsh8.5
% package require Tclx
8.4
% auto_load_file
invalid command name "auto_load_file"
%
However, TclX used to produce these results:
$ tclsh8.3
% package require Tclx
8.3
tclsh>auto_load_file
no value given for parameter "name" to "auto_load_file"
tclsh>

It appears that somewhere after TclX 8.3, the code that loaded the auxilary TclX commands is no longer being loaded.

[Larry W. Virden]

Note that this is in ActiveTcl 8.5.7 on SPARC Solaris 9. I've seen the same problem, however, building TclX cvs head from source against Tcl 8.4/8.5/8.6 built from source on the same platform.

[Larry W. Virden]

It appears that other Tclx package library management commands are not being found, but are still documented in Tclx man page. Besides the auto_load_file, I also see
% package require Tclx
8.4
% auto_commands
invalid command name "auto_commands"
% auto_packages
invalid command name "auto_packages"
% searchpath
invalid command name "searchpath"

Note that other commands, such as buildpackageindex, convert_lib, and loadlibindex, do seem to be found.

[Larry W. Virden]

I've looked through the ChangeLog file . There's a 2002 reference that indicates says:
* library/tclx.tcl: changed to force loading of most tclx runtime
library files directly

* library/arrayprocs.tcl:
* library/autoload.tcl:
* library/fmath.tcl: minor code cleanup

That seems to imply that the autoload.tcl file was still expected to be used. The documentation with the cvs head of tclx still documents the functions. So perhaps something broke along the way that could be fixed?

[Larry W. Virden]

When I look at tclx.tcl, version 1.2, I see the code change to force load specifically skipped the help routines, but it also skipped the autoload.tcl and tcllib.tcl functions as well as the code for buildpackageindex . There wasn't anything specifically about leaving this code out, and the TclX.n page wasn't updated to indicate those functions are deprecated.

So, is it expected that these functions are no longer going to be part of Tclx permanently and that people expecting to use them need to take some specific action? If permanent, then is it expected that the actual files containing these functions will be going away at some point?