Getting "tcl wasn't compiled with threads enabled" error

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 2, 2007, at 01:24, Bernard Desgraupes wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Sep 1, 2007, at 12:00, Bernard Desgraupes wrote:
>>
>>> OK, I've solved my problem: I edited the Portfile and added   
>>> manually --enable-threads to the [configure.args] proc arguments   
>>> and rebuilt tcl from scratch. Then I fiddled with sym links to  
>>> make  sure that the tclsh in /usr/bin points to /opt/local/bin/ 
>>> tclsh and  similarly with the tclConfig.sh file.
>>>
>>> After that, the selfupdate configuration went fine.
>>>
>>> I'm still wondering why the --enable-threads configure argument  
>>> is  not present by default (or at least via a variant) if it is  
>>> needed  by something as basic as "port selfupdate".
>>> I'm probably missing something.
>>
>> It sounds like a rogue Tcl in /usr/local was interfering. I  
>> recommend  you remove it, and anything else you have directly in / 
>> usr/local. It  will likely interfere with other MacPorts ports. I  
>> recommend you  install any software you need by using MacPorts. If  
>> ports do not  exist for software you want, they can probably be  
>> created.
>
> Yes, I have aTcl in /usr/local but it seems that this is now the  
> location ($prefix) where Tcl's Makefile installs. In the past the  
> prefix was just /usr.  Now the configure script says:
> if test "${prefix}" = "NONE"; then
>    prefix=/usr/local
> fi
>
> I periodically rebuild my Tcl (and Tcl.framework too) from newly  
> released sources or from CVS HEAD: so tclsh gets installed in /usr/ 
> local/bin. Never mind, now I'm aware of the issue, I think I can  
> cope with it.
>
> Yet the original question still holds: why doesn't the Tcl Portfile  
> have the --enable-threads argument if threads are required to be  
> enabled when executing a "port selfupdate" ?

Don't know, and there's no tcl maintainer whom we could ask. Does  
MacPorts even build itself against the MacPorts tcl if it's present?  
I thought it always used the system's tcl. Well, except obviously in  
your case it's using the /usr/local tcl but again that's only because  
gcc always looks there and we don't know how to turn it off.

The first lines of /opt/local/bin/port are:

#!/bin/sh
#\
exec /usr/bin/tclsh "$0" "$@"

So it seems the intention is to use the system's tcl, not MacPorts's  
tcl.

We could of course add --enable-threads to the tcl port if that's  
desired.