Getting Tcl, Tk, and wish


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These software packages are available by anonymous ftp from ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/tcl\_old. They are needed only for the upshot and nupshot programs; you do not need them in order to install mpich. If you cannot find them at ftp.scriptics.com, copies of Tcl and Tk are available at ftp://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/tcltk.

You should get tcl7.3.tar.Z and tk3.6.tar.Z (and patch tk3.6p1.patch). Later versions of both Tcl and Tk are incompatible with these and do not work with nupshot. The upshot program has been modified to work with either Tk 3.6 or Tk 4.0. Upshot may work with later versions, but we are no longer tracking the changes to Tcl/Tk.

It is necessary that the wish program be accessible to users; the other parts of Tcl and Tk do not need to be installed (but make sure that everything that wish itself needs is installed).

To build Tcl and Tk, we recommend the following approach:

    1. Fetch the compressed tar files and the patch file into an empty directory, preferably in a local (not NFS) file system such as /tmp (but make sure that you have enough space in that file system; xxx should be adequate).


    2. Unpack the tar files: 

        gunzip -c tcl7.3.tar.Z | tar xf - 
    gunzip -c tk3.6.tar.Z | tar xf -

    3. Apply the patch to Tk: 
        cd tk3.6 
    patch -p 1 < ../tk3.6p1patch 
    cd ..
    (Note that the instructions say to use patch -p; newer versions of patch require an argument and the correct value in this case is one; other versions of patch will want -p1 (no space between p and the one).)


    4. Configure Tcl. Pick an installation directory that clearly indicates the Tcl and Tk versions. For example, to build Tcl to install into /usr/local/tcl73tk36, use 

        cd tcl7.6 
    ./configure -prefix=/usr/local/tcl73tk36

    5. Build and install Tcl. Before you execute the make install step, make sure that the directory specified in the -prefix argument to configure exists. 
        mkdir /usr/local/tcl73tk36 
    make 
    make install

    6. Configure, build, and install Tk. Use the same installation directory for Tk that you used for Tcl: 
        cd ../tcl7.6 
    ./configure -prefix=/usr/local/tcl73tk36 
    make 
    make install
This will provide you with a Tcl and Tk installation that can be used with the Tcl and Tk tools provided with mpich. If you have installed these into a non-standard location (such as the one used above), you can set the environment variable TCL73TK36_DIR to the location used as the prefix in the configure commands: 
    setenv TCL73TK36_DIR /usr/local/tcl73tk36
This will allow mpich to find these versions of Tcl and Tk. We no longer use or recommend Tcl/Tk because of the lack of compatibility between versions of Tcl/Tk.


Up: Deprecated Features Next: Obsolete Systems Previous: Deprecated Features