[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Time for a policy? [was Re: Time to move bwidget under /usr/share?]

[Michael Schlenker]

Sergei Golovan schrieb:
> On 10/7/07, Francesco P. Lovergine <frankie at debian.org> wrote:
>> The solution is a mass bug filling, a few NMUs and pre-coordination
>> with RMs to having it as a release goal for Tcl/Tk team. Packages not
>> included in Debian - sorry - are not a problem of ours. There are
> 
> I don't agree with you in that it's not our problem. If we remove
> /usr/lib from auto_path then
>   1) all users will get many packages broken, and will go to their
> authors with complains;
>   2) the authors of the packages will hate Debian for these bugreports.
> 
>> already TONS of different conventions used out there to install
>> stuff for tcl/perl/ruby/python which are very little complaining
>> with our debian policies.
> 
> I don't know about perl/python, but for Tcl most packages simply drop
> pkgIndex.tcl into a subdirectory of /usr/lib. I don't know if any of
> the packages really uses TCL_PACKAGE_PATH from tclConfig.sh.
> 
>> The very first step is an agreement about the paths. I would propose simply
>>
>> /usr/share/tcltk
>> /usr/lib/tcltk
Basically the scheme used by opensuse (not sure if they use
/usr/share/tcl or tcltk currently IIRC, cc'ing the suse tcl maintainer
so he might comment or share his experiences if he wishes. Reinhard,
maybe you like to share your experiences from opensuse moving Tcl
packages from /usr/lib to share...

> 
> Looks OK to me. Though there are packages (at least package - tclx8.4)
> which don't refuse to load into inappropriate tclsh and segfault it.
Which is clearly a bug in that packages pkgIndex.tcl file.
> 
>> for any third-party extension/package, without distinction among
>> Tcl, Tk and/or versions.
Which even might work, as Tcl extension may be (in general) loaded into
multiple version if compiled with stubs and --enable-thread or their
pkgIndex.tcl files should simply hide them.
>>
>> I'm not sure if it is viable also pre-pending
>>
>> /usr/local/lib/tcltk
>> /usr/local/share/tcltk
> 
> To install a package to these directories, one has to modify an
> installation procedure for every package. I'd expect these directories
> to be always empty.
> 
> I think we need to discuss removing /usr/lib from auto_path with
> upstream developers.
> 
>> I think this is the way to go. Not having currently a policy is not
>> a good excuse to avoid a thing that should be done. Having /usr/lib
>> and/or /usr/share in the auto_path is truly bad. We need to coordinate
> 
> I'm still not sure if removing /usr/lib from auto_path isn't too costly.
> 
>> with RMs for that and a mass bug filling for a few packages (and some of
>> them are directly under control of people on this list I think).
>> Folks, let's work as a Tcl/Tk Team, not like an abstract concept.
>>
>> And of course, it's time to startup a policy, I think Tcl is the only
>> main stream language which lacks one (at least a draft).
>> We should go and hide ...

Michael