Notes on using the Tcl Extension Archive client - TEAcup
You've installed ActiveTcl, ensured that the executables are in the search path of your shell, and you're looking at a command prompt. I'm using Windows XP, but you could be using MacOS X or any of the different flavours of Unix.
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>tclsh
% set auto_path
C:/Tcl/lib/tcl8.5 C:/Tcl/lib C:/Tcl/lib/tcllib1.7 C:/Tcl/lib/tklib0.2
{C:/Documents and Settings/Alastair Davies/Teapot/repository/package/win32-ix86/lib}
{C:/Documents and Settings/Alastair Davies/Teapot/repository/package/tcl/lib}
% exitThe last two elements of this list are new. The Teapot folder in my home directory has been created during the installation of the latest release of ActiveTcl. (I am using release 8.5.0.0.272633.) Teapot contains a repository folder, which contains an INDEX and a config file, but there is no package folder yet.
You'll use the TEAcup client to manage the extensions, packages or modules in that folder.
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup help
teacup.exe
is a tool to access package repositories
teacup.exe help commands List of commands provided by teacup
teacup.exe help help How to use help
teacup.exe help options Describes the standard options
teacup.exe help queries Describe the syntax of complex queries
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup archive list
http://teapot.activestate.comOut-of-the-box, TEAcup is set to access the ActiveState repository. Maybe you want to grab a copy of the dict extension, in order to be able to use your 8.5 scripts in an 8.4 installation.
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup install dict Resolving dict -is package ... [package dict 8.5.3 win32-ix86 @ http://teapot.activestate.com] Resolving Tcl -require 8.4 -is package ... [package Tcl 8.5 _ ... Already installed, probing dependencies] Retrieving package dict 8.5.3 win32-ix86 ...@ http://teapot.activestate.com ... Ok Installing into C:/Documents and Settings/Alastair Davies/Teapot/repository Installing package dict 8.5.3 win32-ix86
And, sure enough, there is now a new cascade of folders within my repository.
Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies\Teapot\repository\package\win32-ix86\lib\dict-8.5.3
08/12/2006 10:12 <DIR> .
08/12/2006 10:12 <DIR> ..
08/12/2006 10:12 32,768 dict853.dll
08/12/2006 10:12 268 pkgIndex.tcl
08/12/2006 10:12 306 teapot.txt
3 File(s) 33,342 bytesSo far, so very good. No doubt there will be some problems, but I've only stumbled on one so far. Consistently, the TEAcup client is unable to update itself.
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup update-self Updating C:/Tcl/bin/teacup.exe ... Found newer version 8.4.14.1.273125 (win32-ix86) @ http://teapot.activestate.com Retrieving application teacup 8.4.14.1.273125 win32-ix86 ...@ http://teapot.activestate.com ... Error: timeout Bad retrieval.
AK: I ran into timeouts myself, not necessarily a server problem. I specify a 10 second -timeout for package http, and this is apparently abasolute, not activity-based, so this may kill us mid-transfer. In the newest builds of teacup that value was upped to 30 seconds. Luckily even with update-self not workeing oyu can update manually. teacup get teacup will likely run into the same timeout. However you can use whatever your prefered browser is and go to http://teapot.activestate.com/application/name/teacup/list This gives you the list of teacups, and from there you can download it either using the browser, or wget, ...
One other niggle struck me when I updated a buggy extension installed in C:\Tcl\lib to a newer version retrieved using TEAcup. Because of the order of the directories in the auto_path list, it was necessary to delete the former version in order to be able to use the latter. Perhaps with correct use of version numbers this would not be a problem, but this particular bug in the vfs::starkit package concerned the incorrect use of version numbers!
Anyway, these are minor problems, in an excellent development. Many thanks to ActiveState and others who have contributed. I hope this helps get more people started using the TEAcup client and that similar guidance for package authors to use the TEApot server will become available.
Alastair Davies 8 December 2006
LV are there arguments to get reports rather than getting the data? For example, are there arguments so I can ask what items would be updated? How about arguments for getting a list of extensions in the repository but not installed? What about a report of the metadata about an extension - what it is, who contributed it, what the license is, etc.? And one last report I can envision knowing - a report of what versions of an extension are available and the dependencies of those extensions . This last report would be useful if you needed to assure yourself which version of the extension was needed for a particular version of tcl. Since one might be needing to download the extension on machine one and then to move it to another machine, the client can't depend on the current machine's version of tcl being the destination version (same for platform, etc.) ...
Alastair Davies didn't intend to reproduce the manual page [L1 ] in the example above -- just give people the confidence to grab a package using TEAcup for the first time. There are command line options galore.
For example, the --dry-run switch reports on what would be updated (if anything).
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup install --dry-run dict Resolving dict -is package ... [package dict 8.5.3 _ ... Already installed, probing dependencies]
You can see what's in your own local repository...
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup list --at-default package dict 8.5.3 win32-ix86 package starkit 1.3.1 tcl package vfs 1.3 win32-ix86
...and the full list in the remote archive...
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup list
...which I won't paste in here. Specific packages are available for more than one platform, and often in more than one version, as XOTcl, for example.
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup list XOTcl package XOTcl 1.4.0 aix-powerpc package XOTcl 1.4.0 hpux-parisc package XOTcl 1.4.0 linux-glibc2.2-ix86 package XOTcl 1.4.0 macosx-universal package XOTcl 1.4.0 solaris2.6-sparc package XOTcl 1.4.0 solaris2.10-ix86 package XOTcl 1.4.0 win32-ix86 package XOTcl 1.5.3 aix-powerpc package XOTcl 1.5.3 hpux-parisc package XOTcl 1.5.3 linux-glibc2.2-ix86 package XOTcl 1.5.3 macosx-universal package XOTcl 1.5.3 solaris2.6-sparc package XOTcl 1.5.3 solaris2.10-ix86 package XOTcl 1.5.3 win32-ix86
RLH Why does it bring back everything instead of the platform possible versions?
There were three other versions of XOTcl that I excised from the list. And what is XOTcl?
C:\Documents and Settings\Alastair Davies>teacup describe --all XOTcl
Entity XOTcl
Origin @ http://teapot.activestate.com
category : Object oriented programming
description : XOTcl combines the ideas of scripting and
object-orientation in a way that preserves the benefits of
both of them. It is equipped with several new language
functionalities.
name : XOTcl
platform : aix-powerpc hpux-parisc linux-glibc2.2-ix86
macosx-universal solaris2.10-ix86 solaris2.6-sparc
win32-ix86
require : {Tcl -require 8.4}
subject : OO Objects Classes Inheritance Methods
summary : An object-oriented scripting language based on MIT's OTcl
version : 1.4.0 1.5.0 1.5.1 1.5.2 1.5.3Now you know.
Finally, LV asks above about downloading on one machine and moving to another, with a different set of installed packages and possibly even a different architecture. Is there a flag to force a particular choice of architecture and to retrieve all dependencies, even ones already present on the local machine? I'm not sure there is. But bear in mind that I used this for the first time yesterday, so that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Alastair Davies 8 December 2006
male 2007-06-04:
Sorry to ask, but from which ActiveTcl version on the Teapot repository should be installed?
I currently run 8.4.13 and have no repository at the expected location.
Another problem is, that my software was installed using the Administrator login and is now used with the "normal" login. I would expect, that the repository could be found in the Administrators profile, but there it is not.
And how is teacup to be used to create a standard repository?