heads up: tcl and tk 8.5

[Michael Thomas]

John Ellson wrote:
>> The 'restricted auto_path' patch that we are adding will limit the
>> search to %{_libdir}/tcl8.5 and %{_datadir}/tcl8.5.  This greatly
>> improves the startup time for most Tcl applications.  However, it does
>> require that maintainers of Tcl extension packages make some changes to
>> ensure that the extensions get installed into %{_libdir}/tcl8.5 (or
>> %{_datadir}/tcl8.5) instead of %{_libdir} (or %{_datadir}).  I will be
>> happy to help out any maintainers that want help with this change.
> 
> 
> Will this information be available from some kind of introspection from
> running tclsh ?

Yes.  You can start tclsh and run 'set auto_path'.  This will print out
a list of the directories that will be searched for packages.

> Has this change been accepted upstream so that it can be relied on on
> other platforms?

I had a discussion with upstream about this, and they blamed the problem
on the distributions installing Tcl and the extensions into too-generic
directories.  Unfortunately, most extensions were developed to be
installed directly into /usr/lib and /usr/share, and now need to be
patched to be installed elsewhere.

In any case, you can always look at the contents of the auto_path
variable on any platform in Tcl to see where extensions are looked for.

--Mike