MacOS ActiveState TCL 8.6.x and Sigil issue

[KevinH]

I have to keep an older version around to properly build projects to keep things working back to 10.12 so my main dev machine runs Mojave but it is a 2013 iMac.

My 2020 MacBookPro laptop runs Catalina. Neither Big Sur nor Monterey added anything much over Catalina that I would find compelling to do an upgrade. And I never update my machines until well into or even near the end of the next release cycle when I do decide to update. So BigSur would be my choice over Monterey anyway.

Apple creating a new OS release once each year and only supporting the last 3 with updates is true madness on Apple's part.

I try not to support such nonsense which is why Sigil works back to 10.12 Sierra (and it only came out in 2016!).

Originally Posted by odamizu

Thank you! I'm still on the fence about updating to Monterey. I'm currently using Catalina.

KevinH, what version macOS do you prefer nowadays, especially for Sigil?

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Also keep in mind that I *think* you could still get (and legally use) the newest versions of Tk/TCL free for personal use ...

I've been clicking around ActiveState's website, and it appears that if you're just signing up for a free account now, you only have access to 8.5 (for macOS). However, if I log in with my pre-existing free account, I have access to 8.6.9, which is the last installer I downloaded. I have no access to any version newer than 8.6.9.

Originally Posted by KevinH

... my main dev machine runs Mojave ... My 2020 MacBookPro laptop runs Catalina ...

Thank you! In that case, my interest in Monterey decreases

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I've been clicking around ActiveState's website, and it appears that if you're just signing up for a free account now, you only have access to 8.5 (for macOS). However, if I log in with my pre-existing free account, I have access to 8.6.9, which is the last installer I downloaded. I have no access to any version newer than 8.6.9.

That's from the website, right? I was under the impression that a registered account entitled the user to use the Active Platform command line tools to download/install/activate newer versions. I could be wrong, though. I haven't tried it. Nor am I encouraging anyone else to do so.

[KevinH]

I have built a TclTk v 8.6.12 from latest sources. It is a dmg file that when mounted provides a TclTk-8.6.12.pkg installer.

It is not-signed as I do not have a installer pkg signing privs, since Sigil has never needed a .pkg installer.

If you have a machine without an ActiveState ActiveTCL installed, please give it a try. It appears to work on my machine with Sigil just fine.

I posted the TclTk_8.6.12.dmg to our github Sigil 1.8.0 Releases page.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That's from the website, right? I was under the impression that a registered account entitled the user to use the Active Platform command line tools to download/install/activate newer versions. I could be wrong, though. I haven't tried it. Nor am I encouraging anyone else to do so.

Ummm ... so, I have only ever gone to ActiveState's website to download ActiveTcl. All the other stuff kinda confuses me and what you asked kinda confuses me.

At some point ActiveState required me to register for a free account to download ActiveTcl from their website, which I did. The website then gave me a dashboard and words like project and builds and forking, which I don't really understand.

Now when I log in, I see a dashboard with two options:



If I click on the second choice, I am offered ActiveTcl-8.6.9.8609.2-macosx...

If I go to the Overview tab and click View All Available Builds I get the same thing. Ditto if I click the Download Builds tab.

I'm not sure about command line tools and it's entirely possible that I'm missing a whole other developer section that I don't understand

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

I have built a TclTk v 8.6.12 from latest sources. It is a dmg file that when mounted provides a TclTk-8.6.12.pkg installer ...

If you have a machine without an ActiveState ActiveTCL installed, please give it a try. It appears to work on my machine with Sigil just fine.

I only have the one computer, which already has ActiveTcl 8.6.9 installed, but I am happy to test your 8.6.12 installer on top of 8.6.9.

I downloaded TclTk_8.6.12.dmg from GitHub Sigil 1.8.0 Release page and copied it to Desktop.

I opened the installer, agreed to license terms, clicked Install, only to get:

"This package is incompatible with this version of macOS. The package is trying to install content to the system volume. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance."

I am running Catalina 10.15.7.

Is this happening because I already have 8.6.9 installed? (I'm kinda nervous about uninstalling 8.6.9 since everything is currently working.)

ETA: Not sure if this adds any other useful information, but I launched ActiveState's ActiveTcl 8.6.9.8609.2 installer to see what would happen. The first pop-up window I get says: "This package will run a program to determine if the software can be installed". When I click Continue, a second pop-up says: "An existing installation has been found on your system. Another non-system installation of Tcl exists on this system in /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework. Please consider uninstalling it before proceeding with the current installation." I stopped there.

[KevinH]

Hmm ... I think this is because of macOS settings you have that do not allow for unsigned packages. My TclTk puts things in the proper /Library/Frameworks location just like the ActiveState one but it is unsigned. It appears to work on Mojave. Perhaps Catalina locks things down further?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Ummm ... so, I have only ever gone to ActiveState's website to download ActiveTcl. All the other stuff kinda confuses me and what you asked kinda confuses me.

At some point ActiveState required me to register for a free account to download ActiveTcl from their website, which I did. The website then gave me a dashboard and words like project and builds and forking, which I don't really understand.

Now when I log in, I see a dashboard with two options:

Attachment 190260

If I click on the second choice, I am offered ActiveTcl-8.6.9.8609.2-macosx...

If I go to the Overview tab and click View All Available Builds I get the same thing. Ditto if I click the Download Builds tab.

I'm not sure about command line tools and it's entirely possible that I'm missing a whole other developer section that I don't understand

I'm flying a bit blind myself. I'm just going by some descriptions of something called the "Active Platform" that sounded to me like it ran on the local machine (from the command-line). But I could be wrong. The free account may be limited to 8.5 on macOS using that method as well.

I think the bottom line, here is that ActiveState has really jumped the shark on this change.

[KevinH]

Hi Odamizu,

Okay I was able to reproduce the exact issue you are seeing on my own Catalina based laptop. It seems for Catalina and later you need to build the pkg with pkgbuild command with --install-location set otherwise it thinks your package is tryting to be installed someplace it should not be even if it is not.

So I have rebuilt the TclTk_8.6.12.dmg installer to use pkgbuild and that extra command line setting.

I have now tested installing the new TclTk_8.6.12.pkg on my Catalina laptop and it properly installed things to where they belong.

So please try regrabbing TclTk_8.6.12.dmg from Sigil 1.8 releases page and giving it a go. It should install just fine as it is an upgrade of what ActiveState put there. If not, I can lead you through fixing things manually.

Hope this does the trick.

KevinH

Originally Posted by odamizu

I only have the one computer, which already has ActiveTcl 8.6.9 installed, but I am happy to test your 8.6.12 installer on top of 8.6.9.

I downloaded TclTk_8.6.12.dmg from GitHub Sigil 1.8.0 Release page and copied it to Desktop.

I opened the installer, agreed to license terms, clicked Install, only to get:

"This package is incompatible with this version of macOS. The package is trying to install content to the system volume. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance."

I am running Catalina 10.15.7.

Is this happening because I already have 8.6.9 installed? (I'm kinda nervous about uninstalling 8.6.9 since everything is currently working.)

ETA: Not sure if this adds any other useful information, but I launched ActiveState's ActiveTcl 8.6.9.8609.2 installer to see what would happen. The first pop-up window I get says: "This package will run a program to determine if the software can be installed". When I click Continue, a second pop-up says: "An existing installation has been found on your system. Another non-system installation of Tcl exists on this system in /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework. Please consider uninstalling it before proceeding with the current installation." I stopped there.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by KevinH

... Okay I was able to reproduce the exact issue you are seeing on my own Catalina based laptop ... I have rebuilt the TclTk_8.6.12.dmg installer ... please try regrabbing TclTk_8.6.12.dmg from Sigil 1.8 releases page and giving it a go ...

Success! Thank you! Looks like Mac users don't need to go to ActiveState's website for TclTk anymore

[KevinH]

Great news! Thank you for testing it!

[troubledMan]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Great news! Thank you for testing it!

No, thank you very much for completing that task in so little time.

It's OK under macOS Monterey. I tried to uninstall Sigil-Kindlegen-TclTk 8.5 first, but I had to left TclTk, as the script provided by Active pointed to different locations to those indicated in the log (¿?) that the installation script left in the user root (AT.postflight.1166):

Has /Library/Tcl/teapot = 0
HOME______ = /Users/****
USER______ = ****
pkgdir____ = /Volumes/ActiveTcl-8.5/ActiveTcl-8.5.pkg
installdir = /
repository = /Library/Tcl/teapot
shell_____ = /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.5
Having a seed repository.
No existing repository, copying the seed to the repository-to-be at /Library/Tcl/teapot
/usr/local/bin/teacup link make /Library/Tcl/teapot /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.5
Ok
/usr/local/bin/teacup default /Library/Tcl/teapot
/Library/Tcl/teapot
Forcing ownership of /Users/geum/Library/Application Support/ActiveState to geum
___done

So, I've installed again Sigil & KindleGen (last versions) and the non ActiveState package made by KevinH and, bingo! Everything is as it should. Well, no: if I set the compression level to 2 in the plugin interface, there is no output, as it was in my previous installation under macOS High Sierra.

Again, thank you!

[msridhar]

Hi all, this is kind of random, but I wanted to write and thank the Sigil developers for creating and publishing the TclTk_8.6.12.dmg build for Mac. I teach a programming languages class where one assignment relies on Ruby + Tcl/Tk, and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get it to work on recent versions of MacOS. Finally, through a Google search I landed on this forum thread and found this build, which works great with our Ruby code! Thank you so much for making this build available; you have made life much easier for my students with Macs :-)

[KevinH]

Glad it was of use!

Originally Posted by msridhar

Hi all, this is kind of random, but I wanted to write and thank the Sigil developers for creating and publishing the TclTk_8.6.12.dmg build for Mac. I teach a programming languages class where one assignment relies on Ruby + Tcl/Tk, and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get it to work on recent versions of MacOS. Finally, through a Google search I landed on this forum thread and found this build, which works great with our Ruby code! Thank you so much for making this build available; you have made life much easier for my students with Macs :-)