Following the move of the Tcl head (8.5) to require autoconf 2.5x, I 
think it is time to do the same for TEA (the sampleextension, and those 
extensions that are derived from it - which is most of what you see in 
ActiveTcl).

This will only affect developers who have to modify tclconfig/tcl.m4 or 
their configure.in files, which should be few (I think I do most of 
those changes).

In all these changes I have learned to hate autoconf in new ways, and I 
think it is high time that we extended TEA with the creation of a Tcl 
script that can build extensions (anything pure Tcl, and possibly 
simpler C-based ones) without any need for autoconf.  What will assist 
us in this is the new config info in Tcl 8.5, which means that this may 
be something to look forward to, but may not be usable with 8.4 or 
earlier.  I know that Donal has toyed with teapot.tcl, and this would be 
something along those lines (an assumption that you have Tcl - and Tk 
for Tk-based extensions - installed when creating these).

The advantage that TEA has is that you can build extensions with 
completely different compiler setups than the core used (this is 
something that the ActiveTcl build system actually has to take advantage 
of on some more painful unix systems).  Without an immense amount of 
work this would be very hard to do at the Tcl script level.

Comments?

-- 
     Jeff Hobbs                     The Tcl Guy
     Senior Developer               http://www.ActiveState.com/
         Tcl Support and Productivity Solutions



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