ActiveState Community

The best version of Tcl to use with Windows Vista is ActiveTcl 8.4.14 or later.

There are currently minor issues with installing and uninstalling, but these are not serious and are being worked on. The demo applications distributed with ActiveTcl all function as expected, including the graphical libraries and Expect.

Note that you will need to right-click the installation file and select "Run as Administrator" for the installation to be successful. This will be fixed in a future release of ActiveTcl.

The first version of ActiveTcl to be built natively for Intel Macs was ActiveTcl 8.4.13.0. Versions before this version were built specifically for PowerPC-based Macs. It may be possible to run the PowerPC version on the Intel Macs, taking advantage of the PowerPC emulation layer in OS X; however, this tends to be quite slow. Therefore, we recommend only using the Intel-specific builds of ActiveTcl 8.4.13.0 or higher on an Intel Mac.

For each build of ActiveTcl 8.4.13.0 and higher there are two files. One file specifies macosx-powerpc, and is of course the build for PowerPC-based Mac OS X systems. The other file specifies macosx-ix86, and is the correct package to install on your Intel Mac.

You can get past versions of ActiveState products from our ftp server:

ftp://downloads.activestate.com/

You can also access the ftp repository via the web at:

http://downloads.activestate.com/

This can be useful if you are behind a firewall that does not allow ftp.

Rather than being linked to a different interpreter, in recent versions of ActiveTcl 8.4, Expect has been made into a proper Tcl package. If you have the line:

package require Expect

In your source file before the first use of any Expect functions or variables, you can then run the file using tclsh, without having to use a special interpreter.
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With ActiveTcl 8.5.x there is an additional issue. Tcl 8.5 still has not been deemed the standard version, so the number of extensions shipped with 8.5 is limited. Modules can be downloaded and installed for ActiveTcl 8.5 through the TEApot distribution mechanism.

Being "developmental" has one major benefit, especially important if you cannot get internet access for TEApot. It is possible to install an 8.5 release ON TOP of (into the same directory) an 8.4 release. This gives you both tclsh and tclsh8.5, wish and wish8.5, fully working demos, plus the complete set of modules shipped with 8.4 which are also all compatible with 8.5.

If you wish to have both 8.4 and 8.5:
-You MUST install 8.4 first. (If you already have 8.5 only, it should be uninstalled.)
-It is always advisable to manually delete any files left behind in the ActiveTcl install directory when changing versions.
-You MUST use a compatible pairing. The compatible pairings are:

ActiveTcl 8.4.19.0 with 8.5.2.0
ActiveTcl 8.4.18.0 with 8.5.1.0
ActiveTcl 8.4.17.0 with 8.5.0.0.283511

The Export Control Classification Number for ActiveTcl is EAR99 (self-classified). For a brief description of EAR99 and information on the difference between EAR99 and NLR (No License Required), see:

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/faq/reg/reg0031.html

buildall.vc is a batch file used to build a source distribution of Tcl on Windows platforms. This is associated with the Tcl.tk distribution of the language.

We do not support the standard distribution of the Tcl language, but rather ActiveTcl, which is a pre-built kit containing Tcl, Tk, and a host of useful libraries.

You can find more information, including download links, at the following URL:

http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTclFamily/

BLT is not provided with ActiveTcl, which is our free Tcl/Tk distrbution available for Windows, UNIX, and OS X. For more information on what is included with ActiveTcl, please see the documentation at:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActiveTcl

We do not provide BLT at this time largely because it is an unmaintained extension with outstanding issues, and cannot be considered "stable".

Since 8.4.8, automated installation was included but not published or
documented. The following documentation comes straight out of the comments
in the installer code:

--directory DIR

The installer goes auto and installs the distribution
into the directory DIR. The directory for the demos
is derived from that, it is DIR/demos. This can be
overridden. See below. The runtime directory is DIR as
well. This can be overridden. See below.

--demo-directory DIR

Overrides the location of the demo directory. See above.
The option is ignored if the installer is not in auto-mode.

--runtime-directory DIR

Specify directory to patch in. Optional. Ignored if
automatic mode was not activated with --directory.
Ignored on Windows.

--user-mode

Windows only, ignored on Unix. Install for the current
user. Default is to install for all users, i.e. admin-mode.
The option is ignored if the installer is not in auto-mode.

--no-plugin

Deactivates the installation of the plugin and all related
stuff. Optional. Default for automatic mode is to install
the plugin. The option is ignored if the installer is not in auto-mode.