"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little less scary! "

In which I chronicle my experiences attempting to upgrade my version of TCL/TK to match the web-based help files I had already obtained.

For the short version, click here

On with the story!

Naturally, the first thing I looked for was the RPM. Found it, couldn't get it because Red Hat FTP was _slow_ during daytime. So I went to sun.

There I found tcl7.5 (I'm cautious - don't want to use beta stuff when I can avoid it. That is until I'm independently wealthy with time on my hands!). Look for:

    ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/tcl7.5p1.tar.gz

    tk4.1p1.tar.gz

    ~/tcl

    ~/tcl/tcl7.5
    ~/tcl/tk4.1

So, I changed to the unix subdirectory:

    ~/tcl/tcl7.5/unix

Put it on the back burner for a while - I've other work to do. When I got home, I looked up the files again (and found the RPM this time), and downloaded them (at 28.8, instead of T-1 :(

First thing is try the RPM. No luck - it said the .rpm was a 'version 3' RPM, and that I needed to upgrade my version of RPM. Okay - glad I've got two machines at home (Thank you, Mom, for giving me your old '486!), I started up the Windows box (I'm looking forward to getting WABI so my wife can play FreeCell in a _real_ OS :) and started surfing again...

Does anybody know why the rpm says that rpm2.2.rpm is a version 3 rpm and I need to upgrade?

While I was finding this out, I was exploring other avenues. I got the files from sun installed on my machine at home. But they wouldn't compile (something about missing include files - this didn't surprise me, I've stripped that machine back in the name of hard drive space).

So, being the explorer I am, I got out the 'sun archives' CD from my Red Hat install set. Did a 'find' for "*.tcl" and was happy to see there was a tcl7.5p1.tar.gz file. Good. Ungzipped the thing and 'tar tvf'ed it to see what was in it. Hmmm. "./usr/..." Looks like I should just untar it from the root directory. I'm not so cautious when I'm frustrated.

This option took a _lot_ of drive space. I wish I could undo it. It didn't really work (and it complained about not being able to form links. I tried to do the links myself, but it still failed).

That was relaxing. I realized I'd been able to compile at the office, where it was all the same setup, so I could play with "make install" at home and see what I could do.

While I was connected to work, I had the idea to try "wish" from the compiled directory at work. IT WORKED! Headway at last! (Did I also mention that I'm sometimes a bit slow?) But I've got this really ugly hierarchy of files to my compiled copy of 'wish', and I don't know what it's going to look for. Copy to my home machine.

Here's the part where things go quickly.

On the home machine, I set up the directory structure I had at work and untarred the files. Now I've got a working copy of wish and tclsh.

I created a 'bin' directory off my home directory and copied 'wish' and 'tclsh' into that directory. I also copied the two 'lib' files "libtcl7.5.a" and "libtk4.1.a" into the bin directory. I don't know where they really go, but this place makes good sense.

So I run 'wish' from there. Error message - unable to load 'libtcl' from a list of directories. I'm not sure what they all were, but one was '~/library'. Since it worked from ~/tcl/tk4.1/unix, I just copied the '~/tcl/tk4.1/library' directory to '~/library', and then copied '~/tcl/tcl7.5/library' to '~/library'.

Now wish ran with the right version. Delete the ~/tcl structure (backup just in case!) and it worked. Good enough. I played with my working install of tcl/tk quite happily the rest of the day.

"I've got to set it up to work better!"

So, I get to work and get 'wish' to give me an error message - it complained that the 'init.tcl' was not found in '/usr/local/lib/tcl7.5'.

Okay. I went to '~/tcl/tcl7.5/library' and copied the files I found there to '/usr/local/lib/tcl7.5' (a directory which I had to create, by the way).

Run 'wish' again, and this time it complains about 'tk.tcl' not being found in '/usr/local/lib/tk4.1'. I'd expected something like that. So, create '/usr/local/lib/tk4.1' and 'cp ~/tcl/tk4.1/library/* /usr/local/lib/tk4.1'. And it worked!

Then 'cp ~/tcl/tcl7.5/unix/tclsh /usr/bin/tclsh7.5' and 'cp ~/tcl/tl4.1/unix/wish /usr/bin/wish4.1'. Go to ~ and run 'wish4.1'. It worked again! Good, create the link 'ln -sf /usr/bin/wish4.1 /usr/bin/wish' and 'ln -sf /usr/bin/tclsh7.5 /usr/bin/tclsh'

Try it again; 'wish' - and success!

Things I found out:

• In Red Hat 2.1, the tcl/tk libraries are in /usr/lib, but the upgrade looks for stuff in /usr/local/lib. Can anybody explain this relationship to me?

• The script '~/tcl/tcl7.5/unix/configure' has a pair of options: --prefix and --exec-prefix. They have something to do with where tcl/tk expect things to be. Anybody know exactly what?

Short Summary:

Get ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/tcl7.5p1.tar.gz and tk4.1p1.tar.gz
'gunzip' them and 'tar xvf' them

'cd ./tcl7.5/unix'
'configure'
'make'
'make install'
'cd  ../..'
'cd ./tk4.1/unix'
'configure'
'make'
'make install'

cd ../..
'cp ./tk4.1/unix/wish /usr/bin/wish4.1'
'cp ./tcl7.5/unix/tclsh /usr/bin/tclsh7.5'
'ln -sf /usr/bin/wish4.1 /usr/bin/wish'
'ln -sf /usr/bin/tclsh7.5 /usr/bin/tclsh'
'mkdir /usr/local/lib/tcl7.5'
'mkdir /usr/local/lib/tk4.1'
'cp ./tcl7.5/library/* /usr/local/lib/tcl7.5'
'cp ./tk4.1/library/* /usr/local/lib/tk4.1'

At this point, I'm pretty sure 'wish' will work. But no guarantees.

And there will also be a bunch of files left over from any previous installation of TCL/TK. Maybe someday I'll clean them up. Probably not till I get the new Red Hat 4, tho...(I've got to remember to tar & gzip my 'home' tree before that install!)

Earl