Customizing Slackware Tcl Package for Sguil

Most distributions these days are configuring their Tcl packages with --enable-threads as a default. Slackware-current switched some months back with the following in the ChangeLog.txt.

+--------------------------+
Mon Dec  7 02:13:13 UTC 2009
d/ruby-1.9.1_p243-i486-3.txz:  Rebuilt.
  Added an explicit --enable-pthread.  This is mostly to make sure that we get
  the expected option set from future releases of Ruby -- it appears that not
  only is --enable-pthread the default in ruby-1.9.1, but trying to use
  --disable-pthread doesn't work.  Furthermore, Ruby and Tcl/Tk no longer work
  together unless both Ruby and Tcl/Tk are compiled with thread support.
  Compiling Tcl/Tk with thread support has caused some problems in the past.
  If a threaded Tcl app tries to fork(), it will hang, but by now most affected
  Tcl apps (such as eggdrop) should have patches available.
  Anyway, this should fix the issues with Ruby and Tk.  Please test it, and
  report any other problems that arise.
tcl/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz:  Upgraded.
  Compiled using --enable-threads, since Ruby requires it to work with Tk.
tcl/tclx-8.4-i486-3.txz:  Rebuilt.
  Recompiled using --enable-threads.
tcl/tix-8.4.3-i486-2.txz:  Rebuilt.
  Recompiled using --enable-threads.
tcl/tk-8.5.8-i486-1.txz:  Upgraded.
  Compiled using --enable-threads, since Ruby requires it to work with Tk.

+--------------------------+ 

The Sguil daemon will not work with threaded Tcl, so to fix this you need to build a package for the distribution of your choice with the --disable-threads configure option. In Slackware and most other distributions, it is fairly simple to customize a package.

Download Tcl from the source directory on the Slackware mirror of your choice. It should include a slack-desc file, a tcl.SlackBuild file, and the Tcl source. Modify the tcl.SlackBuild file to replace --enable-threads with --disable-threads.

./configure \
  --prefix=/usr \
  --libdir=/usr/lib${LIBDIRSUFFIX} \
  --enable-shared \
  --disable-threads \
  --enable-man-symlinks \
  --enable-man-compression=gzip \
  ${CONFARGS} \
  --build=$ARCH-slackware-linux

You may also want to modify the slack-desc to note that this is a non-threaded version. Then build the new package.

$ sh tcl.SlackBuild
---snip--- 
Slackware package /tmp/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz created.

As you see, the package will get written to /tmp by default. Now replace the threaded version with the new non-threaded version.

$ sudo upgradepkg --reinstall /tmp/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz
+==============================================================================
| Upgrading tcl-8.5.8-i486-1 package using /tmp/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz
+==============================================================================

Pre-installing package tcl-8.5.8-i486-1...

Removing package /var/log/packages/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1-upgraded-2010-03-13,20:03:22...

Verifying package tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz.
Installing package tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz:
PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:
# tcl (Tool Command Language)
#
# Tcl, developed by Dr. John Ousterhout, is a simple to use text-based
# script language with many built-in features which make it especially
# nice for writing interactive scripts.
#
# This is a version customized by nr that uses --disable-threads.
#
Executing install script for tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz.
Package tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz installed.

Package tcl-8.5.8-i486-1 upgraded with new package /tmp/tcl-8.5.8-i486-1.txz.

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