[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Bug#628436: Bug#628436: Please disallow tclsh8.4 as an alternative for the tclsh command

[Sergei Golovan]

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:42 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sergei Golovan wrote:
>
> [...]
>>                                                 in which case the only
>> symlinks to tclsh and wish would be in the tcl and tk packages.
>
> Sounds excellent to me. :)  A smooth way to transition would be to
> remove the alternatives from each tcl8.x and tk8.x package, the goal
> being to get to a point with alternatives still in place but
> tclsh-default and wish-default as the only providers.  Then the
> alternatives could be replaced with plain symlinks in the release
> after.

I think it's a bit late to do this transition before wheezy release
(as the freeze
is approaching), but we'll do it immediately after.

>
> [...]
>>                                                              And I
>> don't know what to do with extensions which work with any Tcl/Tk
>> version (so, I don't want them to require 'tcl'), but come with
>> examples with "#! /usr/bin/tclsh".
>
> Could you give an example?

A few examples in tcl-tls package
(/usr/share/doc/tcl-tls/examples/simpleClient.tcl).
Tcl-tls itself works with any Tcl/Tk version (from 8.3 to 8.6). So,
it'd be too restrictive
to make it depend on the tcl package (in my opinion).

>
> [...]
>> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:20 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> My only worry would be that some package might be using "Depends:
>>> tcl8.4" and expecting the tclsh command to work, when they should have
> [...]
>> It's fairly simple to look through the archive and find if there's
>> such packages. It's not too late to fix them.
>
> antennavis: ok
> aolserver4: affected? (tests/new/all.tcl at build time)
> blt: affected (demos)
> bookview: ok (the corresponding issue for wish probably affects it, though)
> deal: ok
> emacspeak: ok
> epic5: ok
> exmh: affected (postinst, corresponding issue for wish throughout)
> gcl: affected (configure at build time)
> gclcvs: likewise
> gnat-gps: ok
> gpsmanshp: ok
> grass: affected (GRASS_TCLSH)
> gtkwave: ok
> hfsutils: ok
> hping3: ok
> ibutils: affected (at build time)
> isdnutils: ok
> ace: affected (templates/wb26wrproject.mpd)
> idzebra: affected (at build time)
> memchan: ok? (uses TEA to find tcl for doc processing at build time)
> snack: ok
> sqlite: affected (speedtest.tcl etc)
> ruby1.8: ok
> ruby1.9: ok
> gnu-smalltalk: ok
> tktable2.9: ok (uses TEA)
> tcludp: ok (uses TEA)
> magnus: affected (copier.tcl)
> mozart: ok
> mysqltcl: ok (uses TEA)
> nam: ok (only affects examples installed to doc)
> ns2: ok (ModelGen is not installed)
> openmsx: ok
> otcl: ok
> [... to be continued ...]
>
> Build-time issues can be softened by making tcl8.4-dev depend on tcl
> during a transition period.
>
> (Remaining packages to check: page-crush paraview pcb-common pfm rat
> rrdtool-tcl sauce tcl tcl8.4-dev tclcsound timidity-interfaces-extra
> tk707 tk8.4 tkgate ttt tttprove tttview timidity-interfaces-extra
> vigor vim vkeybd weechat-plugins wzdftpd-mod-tcl xchat-gnome xcircuit
> xdeview xotcl xotcl-shells libyaz4-dev)

Less than 20 packages are affected. I suspect that the most of them are easy
to port to 8.5 (but again, freeze is coming).

Cheers!
-- 
Sergei Golovan