Hi, On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 8:19 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > Christian Couder wrote: > >> By default running `make install` in the root directory of the >> project will set TCLTK_PATH to `wish` and then go into the "git-gui" >> and "gitk-git" sub-directories to build and install these 2 >> sub-projects. >> >> When Tcl/Tk is not installed, the above will succeed if gettext >> is installed, as Tcl/Tk is only required as a substitute for msgfmt >> when msgfmt is not installed. But then running the installed gitk >> and git-gui will fail. > > Hm, I am not sure I understand the point of this change. E.g. > if I run "make install" for git and install tk later, wouldn't I > want gitk to work? Yeah, if you know how it all works and want to decide after installing gitk and git-gui if you actually want to use them, then things are a bit less straightforward with this patch, though you can still do what you want by setting the BYPASS_TCLTK_CHECK variable. But I doubt that many people who are actually building Git are in this case. > Can you say more about where this comes up? The original discussion is: https://public-inbox.org/git/b6b12040-100f-5965-6dfd-344c84dddf96@xxxxxxxx/ and here are discussions related to version 1 of this patch: https://public-inbox.org/git/20171115125200.17006-1-chriscool@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/ As Peff mentions in the original discussion, at the Bloomberg Git sprint, we saw someone struggling to compile Git, because of these msgfmt and Tcl/Tk issues. > gitk is a wrapper > script > > #!/bin/sh > # Tcl ignores the next line -*- tcl -*- \ > exec wish "$0" -- "$@" > > Would some error handling there help? E.g. something like > > #!/bin/sh > # Tcl ignores the next line -*- tcl -*- \ > exec wish "$0" -- "$@" || \ > { echo >&2 "Cannot run gitk without tk"; exit 127; } I think Peff already gave his opinion about this in the above discussions. >> If neither Tcl/Tk nor gettext are installed, then processing po >> files will fail in the git-gui directory. The error message when >> this happens is very confusing to new comers as it is difficult >> to understand that we tried to use Tcl/Tk as a substitute for >> msgfmt, and that the solution is to either install gettext or >> Tcl/Tk, or to set both NO_GETTEXT and NO_TCLTK. > > Hm, is this the motivating problem? This is a condition where > the rationale for failing the build seems clearer. This is the issue as well as the above thread that prompted me to take a look at this. >> To improve the current behavior when Tcl/Tk is not installed, >> let's just check that TCLTK_PATH points to something and error >> out right away if this is not the case. > > At first glance I had thought this might set NO_TCLTK automatically, > which I think would be problematic for the reasons mentioned above. > > Erroring out like this patch does and asking the user to explicitly > confirm that they want to install gitk without Tcl/Tk is less > problematic, Yeah that is also my opinion. > so I am not *against* this patch, just interested in more > background. Thanks for taking a look at this, Christian.
