Re: Binaries (and more Language Suggestions)

[Jason L . Asbahr]

>     "We're currently struggling with how to include Tcl/Tk 
>      dependencies in the distribution. We forgot to add the 
>      Tcl/Tk init files.  On systems with Tcl/Tk, the binaries 
>      should work; but, then the point of the binaries in the 
>      first place was to obviate the need for installing Tcl/Tk.)"
> 
> As an avid Swarmer, I hate having to explain to people that if they want
> to experiment with Swarm they'll have to bribe their sys admin or spend
> a couple of frightful days, full time, installing it. And there are
> probably dozens of lurkers out there that still haven't had their first
> taste of Swarming because of these entry barriers...

I'm ashamed to admit to being one of those lurkers.  I have a 1g 
parition on my development Pentium given over to RedHat, just waiting
for a painless Swarm install.  :-)

To throw one more language into the debate (if it hasn't already been
mentioned) -- has anyone on the Swarm team evaluated Python as an
alternative to Tcl?  It provides a superset of the functionality
of Tcl, connects to Tk and a few other GUI APIs, is object oriented,
has tons of data types, is freely distributable, and also has spiffy 
Python-Objective C modules (I'll post the readme below).

Who says scripting languages can't be OO?  :-)  I've been having a lot
of fun learning to work with Python (which is more than I can say for Tcl).
One possible use of a Python-Swarm interface is to ease the integration
of other system components into the Swarm mix.  (Examples:  There is
already an OpenGL Python module, Xerox PARC ILU module, etc)

Also, another library of interest is Rivet, a version of Tk that 
"different from Tcl/Tk because it uses no Tcl code evaluation, so it 
is suitable for embedding in other programming languages without the 
overhead of Tcl."  Neat!

FYI:   Python  http://www.python.org
       Rivet   http://www.veritas.com/~brianw/rivet/index.html

Jason Asbahr                    808 Sul Ross  Suite 7
Reactive Systems                Houston, Texas  77006
address@hidden              (713) 942-7937  voice