What is the best TCL interpreter?

[Matthew Babilonia]

Hello, what is the best TCL interpreter to use for Mac OS X? Also does anyone have any websites or resources that they would recommend to learn/study TCL basics?

[Luc]

I can't comment on Mac OS X, but there is a ton of good links for Tcl
beginners here:

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Beginning+Tcl

Note the search box at the top. You can find other things with it too.

You can also use this portable version of the manual:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/magicsplat/files/tcl-docs/

It's not very up to date, but will certainly do for almost anything
you need.

--
Luc
>>

[Rich]

Matthew Babilonia <babiloni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, what is the best TCL interpreter to use for Mac OS X?

Unless Apple has changed things, Mac OS X ships with a TCL interpreter
already installed by Apple as part of the system.

So initially, "best" would likely be "the one Apple provides".

The only aspect where you might want a different one is if Apple's
interpreter is out of date (as in a quite old version of TCL). Then,
if you wanted some of the newer features you'd have to install a newer
interpreter. Note, I don't have a Mac, so I can't comment as to "how"
to do so.

> Also does anyone have any websites or resources that they would
> recommend to learn/study TCL basics?

The TCL wiki is useful https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/ although much of it
may be a bit much for newly learning TCL.

Ashok's book gets mentioned here periodically when someone asks for a
good reference:

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/BOOK+The+Tcl+Programming+Language

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <tnvgnb$132ml$3...@dont-email.me>, Rich <ri...@example.invalid> wrote:
>Matthew Babilonia <babiloni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello, what is the best TCL interpreter to use for Mac OS X?
>
>Unless Apple has changed things, Mac OS X ships with a TCL interpreter
>already installed by Apple as part of the system.
>
>So initially, "best" would likely be "the one Apple provides".
>
>The only aspect where you might want a different one is if Apple's
>interpreter is out of date (as in a quite old version of TCL). Then,
>if you wanted some of the newer features you'd have to install a newer
>interpreter. Note, I don't have a Mac, so I can't comment as to "how"
>to do so.

I had to do ths a while back, as the version already installed (on my Mac)
was pretty old. I wanted to use "try" in my script; the installed version
didn't have it.

So, I posted an item here (in this NG) asking where to get the source. I
got useful responses and was soon happily on my way. The usual GNU
software incantations (configure/make/make install) worked just fine.

Note that my use of TCL is entirely in the context of Expect, so this was
all command line only, which is fine for my purposes. I don't know enough
(or care enough) to comment on it if you need graphics (Tk).

--
There are a lot of Wisconsin farmers right now who, despite having
themselves voted for Trump, are now wishing that their state's electors
had had the good sense to vote for the other candidate - thereby saving
them from their current predicament.

[Ricardo kozmate.net]

Em 21/12/22 15:28, Matthew Babilonia escreveu:

> Also does anyone have any websites or resources that they would recommend to learn/study TCL basics?

I started out with the Tcl Tutorial:
https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html

It is old-ish but the basics are OK, I think. I think the main missing
thing for a beginner would be the {*} argument expansion. See:
https://www.tcl-lang.org/man/tcl/TclCmd/Tcl.htm.

Then, about TK, I read the TkDocs tutorial
https://tkdocs.com/tutorial/index.html

Same warning applies, it may be outdated here and there.

And then I bought Ousterhout's book, but nowadays you'll probably be
better off with Ashok's book (which I do not have, yet... :)


And I keep an eye here. Always something to learn and people to talk with.

--
{ricardo from kozmate.net}

[Torsten Berg]

Hi,

the interpreter shipped with macOS is typically quite old. I do not recommend to use that one unless you are making the first steps in Tcl and do not need the newest features. I have compiled my version from the sources (the current Tcl version 8.6.13), and that is what I would recommend when you are more or less familiar with installing such software from sources with the C compiler that comes with macOS. It is not that difficult and is well explained in the docs of the Tcl distribution. I typically use the embedded build which at the same time makes a good template for own apps that behave just like any other macOS app.

Apart from this, I am not aware of any good distribution for the mac.

Hm, maybe we should make one ourselves ....

[Christian Gollwitzer]

Am 22.12.22 um 20:29 schrieb Torsten Berg:

>
> the interpreter shipped with macOS is typically quite old. I do not recommend to use that one unless you are making the first steps in Tcl and do not need the newest features.

Even worse, it was sometimes buggy as hell (segfaulting....) because the
Mac platform has changed a lot and these changes were corrected only in
current Tcl. The shipping version is 8.5.9 (!!):
(base) Apfelkiste:Tests chris$ /usr/bin/tclsh

WARNING: This version of tcl is included in macOS for compatibility with
legacy software.
In future versions of macOS the tcl runtime will not be available by
default, and may require you to install an additional package.

% info patchlevel
8.5.9

In short, NEVER use it for anything!

> Apart from this, I am not aware of any good distribution for the mac.

I (very loosely) maintain a distribution of kbskit, originally by Rene
Zaumseil, as a Github project, which compiles to binaries for all 3
platforms via Github actions:

https://github.com/auriocus/kbskit

The last binary release is 8.6.11, the source currently compiles 8.6.13.
At the moment, TclCurl is not working on Windows, that's why the release
does not happen. If you login to Github, you can download the artifact
from the latest macOS compilation, though.

Maybe BAWT or some other distro could also bi migrated to Github Actions?

Christian

[Luc]

On Thu, 22 Dec 2022 11:29:31 -0800 (PST), Torsten Berg wrote:

> the interpreter shipped with macOS is typically quite old. I do not
> recommend to use that one unless you are making the first steps in Tcl
> and do not need the newest features. I have compiled my version from the
> sources (the current Tcl version 8.6.13), and that is what I would
> recommend when you are more or less familiar with installing such
> software from sources with the C compiler that comes with macOS. It is
> not that difficult and is well explained in the docs of the Tcl
> distribution. I typically use the embedded build which at the same time
> makes a good template for own apps that behave just like any other macOS
> app.
>
> Apart from this, I am not aware of any good distribution for the mac.
>
> Hm, maybe we should make one ourselves ....

I often wonder why the concept of starkits or metakits or whateverkits
(I honestly don't know the difference) doesn't get a lot more attention
than it currently does.

Distributing these single unit binary super bundles (with plenty of
packages) along with the source in an official manner would be very
beneficial.

Metakits used to be made available by equi4, now they are hard to find.
I know that someone somewhere still puts them out regularly, but why
can't the official Core Team do that?

As it currently is, updating Tcl/Tk requires:

a) compiling from source, which lots of people can't do

b) relying on the Linux distro's repository which may or may not
be updated and which excludes anyone who is stuck with an old distro
for whatever reason.

Single unit binary super bundles would solve that problem.

Of course, Windows is immune to all this. Windows will almost any
Windows executables so it's very easy to update. The problem only
affects Linux and Mac. The Mac is worse because it's super expensive
and won't run on virtual machines.

Just my 2 cents FWIW.

--
Luc
>>

[Torsten Berg]

Oh, another possibility that I just remember is Homebrew. They have the current version 8.6.13:

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/tcl-tk#default

It comes with the cost of installing the Homebrew basic packages as well but on the other hand also gives access to many other apps.

[Manfred Rosenberger]

I would propose VanillaWish from Christian:

... you can get it here:
https://www.androwish.org/download/index.html
... or here:
https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/LUCK
... or
http://www.ch-werner.de/LUCK/

regards, Manfred