Re: Tk on AIX ???

From: Anthony (ajohnson__NoSpAm_at_storix.com)
Date: 01/23/04 

Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:57:31 GMT

Our experience with tcl/tk on AIX has been very bad.
We reported problems to Scriptics for years and they
all went unanswered. We offered to buy tclPro and
support, but they said we'd have to port everything
to AIX ourselves. I think Scriptics (now ActiveState?)
just doesn't like IBM.

We got to version 8.3 (with tclX) with some struggle,
but couldn't get 8.4 to work. We have a large
application based on Tcl/Tk and probably won't try to
update tcl again. We're looking at converting to
another GUI development tool that's better supported
because we can't rely on keeping tcl/tk running on
future AIX versions.

This is unfortunate since we also support Linux on
both Intel and IBM (gasp) pseries platforms, and at
least the Linux version seems to have better support.

There still is the issue of TclX though. It is aparently
included in ActiveTcl (by ActiveState), but only in
binary form. We need to compile our own wishx script as
small as possible but using static libraries since we
distribute it with our product.

Russ wrote:

> I tried compiling on AIX 4.3 system instead after updating the GCC
> compiler, all X11 libraries and include files. The compile finally
> (including tclX) went without a hitch.
>
> Only problem is, whether using wish8.4 or wishx, absolutely no widgets
> respond to the cursor or mouse buttons. This may have some impact on the
> usability of the application.
>
> Is anyone out there in AIXLand (30% of UNIX market) using Tk?
>
> Russ wrote:
>
>> I just upgraded from Tcl/tk 8.3 to 8.4.5, but my app relies heavily on
>> tclX. The latest tclX I can find is 8.3.5, which I used to compile the
>> wishx executable. It seems to work fine until I execute an invalid
>> command which causes wishx to fail with a memory fault. This does not
>> occur with the wish executable compiled in the 8.4 tree.
>>
>> Unfortunately, my application contains a lot of "catch {$win configure
>> ...}" lines, each of which causes tha application to abort if $win
>> does not exist.
>>
>> Does anyone know if a tclX version that works with tcl/tk8.4.5 or know
>> how to fix this problem? BTW, this is on an AIX4.1 system. I need to
>> do this on both AIX and Linux on different platforms, but this is the
>> first one I've tried.
>>
>