Jesse Keating wrote:
Please alert folks you're doing this. fedora-maintainers redhat com is the right place (you should be subscribed!!).
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That's just the list in core, I suspect many more broken in Extras.
I've fixed tcllib in Extras. Even though it doesn't have a dependency on libtcl8.4.so, it does have a directory dependency on the /usr/lib/tcl8.4 directory.
This leads me to a related issue: Tcl searches for packages in 3 directories: * /usr/share/tcl8.5 * /usr/share * /usr/libThe search algorithm involves going into each subdirectory of these three directories, looking for a file named 'pkgIndex.tcl', and then reading it. Since there are quite a few subdirectories in /usr/share and /usr/lib that aren't tcl-related, this results in a lot of wasted time and effort.
To fix, the default value for 'auto_path' in Tcl needs to be reduced to 2 directories: /usr/lib{64}/tcl8.x and /usr/share/tcl8.x. My informal tests have shown that this can reduce the initial load time for Tcl scripts from 3.7s to 0.2s.
Tcl extension packages in Fedora would also have to be modified to install into these version-specific tcl directories, instead of the current convention of /usr/lib|/usr/share. A 'tcl-sitearch' macro would also be needed in Tcl package spec files to detect the correct install directory. This would bring Tcl more in line with the directory structure used by other scripting languages (perl, python) in Fedora, and give Tcl applications a boost in startup times.
I'll file this request in Bugzilla, but was hoping to get feedback from the Fedora devs, especially those who maintain Tcl extensions, before any changes were made.
--Wart