Installing Tcl and Expect on Solaris 10

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We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

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Installing Tcl and Expect on Solaris 10 - a checklist

Hot off the presses from the last couple of days - a check list (and a couple of "Gotcha" notes) concerning the installation of Tcl and Expect on a Solaris 10 system, compiling from scratch were possible.

You'll need a C Compiler

We used gcc (the Gnu C compiler) and we installed it from Sun standard packages - you can't compile the C compiler yourself, of course, in the first instance as you need a working compiler to do it ...

The following three packages are needed:

SUNWgccruntime
SUNWgcc
SUNWbinutilities

For the following operations:

a) add /usr/sfw/bin, /usr/local/bin and /usr/ccs/bin to your path, and export
b) set the CC environment variable to the value gcc and export it.

Installing Tcl

1. From a .tar.gz download ... ungzip and untar, cd to the directory created and the unix subdirectory therein.

2. Run ./configure which works out HOW the build should be done

3. Run make which does the build in the work directory

4. Run make test to check that the build worked

(at this point you need to become root, and get back to the same directory)

5. Run make install to install the Tcl program in place (you'll find it as /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4

(at this point revert to ordinary user

Installing Expect

1. From a .tar.gz download ... unzip, unta, cd to the directory created.

2. Run ./configure --with-tcl=/xxx/yyy/tclzzz/unix - that path is tha path to the copy level of the Tcl build wherever you put that - the directory that contains the Tcl Configuration file.

3. Run make expect which does the build of expect in the work directory

(at this point you need to become root, and get back to the same directory)

4. Run make install to install the expect program in place (you'll find it as /usr/local/bin/expect

(at this point revert to ordinary user

Notes

1. If the make test reports network / socket errors and you're not properly network connected, that's not a problem.

2. Our sample build did NOT include the Tk GUI toolkit. Warnings generated during the build of Expect telling us it could not build expectk could be ignored.

3. If you get error messages from /usr/ccs/bin/as they you haven't installed the SUNWbinutilities properly, or your PATH is in the wrong order.

4. If you're using Tcl version 8.5a6 and you get fatal error messages about TCL_REG_BOSONLY build, you have a version of Expect that's not compatible directly with that Tcl, in which various elements were moved around include files. Best solution (as I write) is to step back 1 level with the Tcl.

5. My sample notes used Tcl 8.4.14 and Expect 5.42 on a "recent" Solaris 10 (built No. 0106).

6. Installs are all to default /usr/local/bin directory. Options at ./configure time allow you to change this.
(written 2007-05-02, updated 2007-05-03)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

T248 - Tcl/Tk - A Review of Tcl and Tk Basics
  [1092] Tcl training - often for a larger group - (2007-02-24)
  [1181] Good Programming practise - where to initialise variables - (2007-05-09)
  [1469] Curley brackets v double quotes - Tcl, Tk, Expect - (2007-12-12)
  [4208] Tcl + Tk (Wish) - an introduction and revision example - (2013-11-15)

T211 - Tcl/Tk - What is Expect? Why use it?
  [286] Automating regular manual procedures - (2005-04-21)
  [435] Expect for Windows - (2005-09-04)
  [1173] Cheat Sheet / Check list for Expect maintainers - (2007-05-02)
  [1409] What is Expect? - (2007-10-26)
  [1411] Buffering of inputs to expect, and match order - (2007-10-27)
  [1531] Expecting a item from a list of possibles - (2008-02-04)
  [1602] Automating processes through Expect - (2008-04-05)
  [2474] Using Tcl and Expect to automate repetitive jobs - (2009-10-24)
  [2489] Parallel Pinging, using Python Threads or Expect spawn lists - (2009-11-02)
  [3009] Expect in Perl - a short explanation and a practical example - (2010-10-22)
  [3286] Should we cover expect and/or Tk on our public Tcl courses? - (2011-05-11)
  [3572] Adding Expect on top of Tcl - what is it and where can I get a training course to learn about it? - (2012-01-08)
  [4405] Backup procedures - via backup server - (2015-01-24)
  [4678] Expect with Ruby - a training example to get you started - (2016-05-18)

T201 - Tcl/Tk - What is Tcl?
  [133] Tcl embeds - (2004-11-28)
  [382] Central London Courses - Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, MySQL - (2005-07-18)
  [691] Testing you Perl / PHP / MySQL / Tcl knowledge - (2006-04-19)
  [1268] Changes in advertising cut lines / Buscot / Tcl course - (2007-07-16)
  [2463] Tcl - a true interpretive, command based language - (2009-10-20)
  [4616] Still teaching Tcl in 2016? - (2016-01-06)

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Installing Tcl and Expect on Solaris 10 - a checklist
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