NeoSoft Tcl Package Integration 1997

This is the NeoSoft (Houston, TX, USA) release of tcl7.6-based software.
That last year alone has seen an incredible explosion of activity within
the Tcl universe.  NeoSoft has traditionally packaged Tcl with several
extensions to produce a customized Tcl which it distributes and for which
it sells commercial support.

It is available from ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl/neosoft/neotcl/.

It consists of the following packages integrated together:

	itcl2.2p2 (incl. tcl7.6, tk4.2, iwidgets2.2.0)
	tclX7.6.0
	expect-5.25
	dp4.0b1
	gd1.2 (a graphics drawing library)
	neo7.6.0 (neosoft-authored tcl Extensions, also includes db.1.85)

For more information on changes for this release, see the file RELEASE_NOTES
in this directory.

From the toplevel (itcl2.2) directory, it configures, builds and
installs all of the above packages.  We have tested the build on
the following systems:

	Sparc Solaris 2.5
	X86 Solaris 2.5
	Linux-1.2.13

Adding other packages should be a relatively simple matter.

Note the following general characteristics of NeoSoft integrated Tcl
vs. Standard (I)Tcl:

1. Removed the "itcl" subdir that itcl2.2 installs itself into.  While
this might be strictly correct to do, it makes it necessary to integrate
all other packages in the same manner.  We choose instead to remove this
feature.  It makes adding other packages much simpler.

2. Written or extended configure scripts for tclX, expect, dp, and gd,
including appropriate adjustments in Makefiles, adding or modifying
install scripts, etc.  You will find a new script in various places,
called 'install-pkgindex', which will correctly slice out old information
from the main pkgIndex.tcl file and replace it with the new pkgindex
information.  Also, while Dp's attempt at a graphical configuration
and installtion interface is a noble (and interesting) attempt, we
added in the stuff to allow an installation to be done normally (and
thus be integrated with our release).

3. With help from Keith Bostic, created a configure script for db.1.85.
This cleans up our installation a lot, since the Neo package supports Tcl
extensions for talking to db file, and not all systems supply a useful db
library.  If you want to use your system-supplied libdb.a (or libdb.so)
you may use the configure option --with-db=system.  If your system has a
libdb* file, it will use it (but no guarantees that yours is good).

We have only had a chance to test the db libraries on a few systems:
Solaris (x86 and sparc), SGI, and Alpha/Digital Unix.  Of these systems,
the Alpha was the only one to have problems.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Autoconf for db detects BYTE_ORDER.  Previous systems
we have shipped with DB libraries did not configure the byte order
explicitly, which means it defaulted to BIG_ENDIAN.  If BYTE_ORDER ==
LITTLE_ENDIAN, DB swaps bytes around.  This makes it slower, and
possibly incompatable.  I can think of no reason to do this other
than to support access from heterogeneous systems via NFS.  If this
turns out to be a problem for you, go to the auto directory (listed
below) and modify the include/compat.h there manually to set the BYTE_ORDER.

This release does not install the db.1.85 library.  If you want to
install it, go to the directory neo7.5.1/tools/db.1.85/PORT/auto
and type 'make install' after everything else is done.

DB has gone through a flurry of activity in the last year.  Keith Bostic
has released several new versions of the db library.  They have a
compatability mode that can be used with the Neo package.  However, this
has not been integrated into the release yet.  (Look for it in Neotcl8.0.)

4. See our Tcl web page at http://www.neosoft.com/tcl for information
about NeoSoft commercial support and testing metrics.

5. See the individual packages' README, CHANGES (etc.) files for more
information on restrictions, enhancements, etc.

6. In most cases, this should just configure and build.  If you 
have any problems, please let us know at tcl-project@neosoft.com.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to the Tcl community, without which Tcl would not exist.
Especially:

	John Ousterhout and the many - Tcl and Tk
		Sun Microsystems for their continuing support

	Mark Diekhans and Karl Lehenbauer - Extended Tcl (more and more
		of which keeps getting subsumed into core Tcl!)

	Michael McClennan - [incr tcl]

	Brian C. Smith/Cornell University and
	Lawrence A. Rowe/University of California at Berkeley
		Distributed Processing extensions

	Don Libes/NIST - Expect

	Tom Boutell and the Quest Center At Cold Spring Harbor Labs
		Graphics Drawing library (gd)

	Mark L. Ulferts/DSC Communications Corp and others - [incr Widgets]

Again, NeoSoft has provided the funding for me to do this release.
Many thanks to Karl Lehenbauer and NeoSoft for doing so.

Why do a tcl7.6-based release:
Even though Tcl8 is already out, there are probably many
folks out there who will not to move to Tcl8 for various reasons,
most notably that Itcl is not yet out for Tcl8.  Also, several
people asked Karl about it at the Tcl conference in Boston last summer.
Hopefully they will still find it useful.

Randy Kunkee
NeoSoft, Inc.
Houston, TX
