ATTENTION: Tcl/Tk transition
Charles Wilson
cygwin@cwilson.fastmail.fm
Wed Oct 26 22:33:00 GMT 2011
On 10/26/2011 5:53 PM, Cary R. wrote:
> If I'm understanding this correctly once this change has been
> pushed we will be required to start an X server beforerunning
> gitk.
Yes.
> As someone who uses git and gitk all the time having to
> start the X server to run gitk is a pain. I haven't checked this
> recently, but in the past the X server was a bit of a resource
> hog so my typical pattern is toonly start it when needed and
> that's not very often.
Well, the cygwin-X folks have made a lot of improvements over the past
year or so (and the accelerated version looks to be coming along...).
However, because XWin.exe /is/ a cygwin app, it suffers all the normal
posix->win32 emulation penalties that every cygwin app does.
So, one solution is to just use the native win32 XMing xserver
(free-as-in-beer version, or the donation-supported one). tk only
depends on libX11.dll (no other X extensions), so on the client side tk
is fairly light in its X-incarnation.
Also, here's the cygwin-git maintainer from three years ago:
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2008-08/msg00095.html
Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Christopher Faylor on 8/4/2008 5:38 PM:
> | That opens the door to building a
> | real version of tcl/tk for cygwin and linking insight to it.
>
>
> YEAH! Among others, the git package would appreciate the availability of
> a modern tcl/tk.
So...
> I understand the desire to switch to X, but I think this deserves
> some thought on how it will effect the general users.
Well, I think it *has* been thought about, and discussed, quite a bit.
The decision was pretty much adopted -- only the implementation has been
delayed due to (a) lack of roundtuits of the 'cgf' denomination, (b) in
the far past, we had no /modern/ (7.x) X implementation and were limping
along with a very old X distro.
Obviously, until (b) was fixed, it made no sense to modify tcltk. And
until (a) improved -- which, apparently, it never did -- the
implementation couldn't happen. Hence, cgf's decision to invite Yaakov
to take over.
Here are some of the previous discussions:
Interest in "native" Tcl/Tk/Expect/Itcl/... packages?
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2004-10/msg00316.html
Does anyone use insight on cygwin?
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2008-08/msg00089.html
tcl/tk/expect/dejagnu/gdb/insight
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2009-09/msg00311.html
gitk unusable in cygwin-1.7.6-1 because tcltk-20080420-1 is native win32
app.
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2010-08/msg00913.html
====NOTE====
in the gitk thread above, Reini Urban, the cygwin perl and parrot
maintainer, was vehemently against switching tcltk from GDI to X11. I
wonder if his opinion has changed in the past year...
Tcl file separator
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2011-01/msg00257.html
(esp. http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2011-01/msg00369.html)
Re: RFC: Cygwin 64 bit?
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-developers/2011-06/msg00081.html
--
Chuck
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