Variants vs. new ports for different version

[Frank Schima]

Hi Ryan,


On May 28, 2008, at 4:11 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> For example, if blt does not work with tcl/tk 8.5.x and cannot be  
> made to work with that version, then you can now create new ports  
> tcl84/tk84 from the last version of the tcl/tk ports that used  
> version 8.4.x. Like this:

If I go ahead with this, I plan to just take the current Portfiles and  
modify them for 8.4. Tcl/tk 8.4.x are being actively developed so I  
would want to use the latest version of that branch, not just the last  
one at the time of switch to 8.5.

> I should point out though that it's preferable to work with the  
> developers of blt to get it to work with tcl/tk 8.5 and not create  
> new tcl84/tk84 ports. Better to move forward than backward. For  
> example graphviz 2.16 didn't work with tcl/tk 8.5. I could have  
> created tcl84/tk84 ports then, but instead I reported the problem to  
> the developers of graphviz and disabled tcl/tk support in the  
> graphviz port until they released version 2.18 which does support  
> tcl/tk 8.5. See:

I completely agree that it would be optimal to get blt updated to fix  
the problem. It is a known issue. Apparently there is only one  
developer and he has been silent on this issue. In fact, it hasn't  
really been updated for many years. So no one knows when or if this  
will get fixed.


Cheers!
Frank