This is the mail archive of the cygwin-apps mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: ATTENTION: Tcl/Tk transition


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


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]