Why not split into two packages?

[bjlittle]

It seems quite unusual to have bundled both tcl and tk into the one recipe.

Why not split these into two separate feedstocks to make explicit the dependency between tk and tcl.

Also, it would be great to bundle the source code with the recipe, rather than using curl to pull it from an external ftp endpoint.

Thanks.

[msarahan]

Great question! It has been a while since I looked at these. When I last did, my memory is that tk depends on having tcl's source available at build time. Mind you, this is not just headers + libraries. It actually goes looking for .c files. This is why they are together.

Bundling the source code in the recipe would be much nicer, for sure, but conda-build does not currently have a way to support multiple source files. It's something I'd like to do in conda-build, but there have been and continue to be bigger fish to fry. This is such a rare occurrence that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze right now.

[jakirkham]

Have also thought about this too, but never dived that deep into it.

Mind you, this is not just headers + libraries. It actually goes looking for .c files. This is why they are together.

Good to know about this.

Would also add that this would break with the tk package provided in defaults. This is something that we have to be very mindful of as many people (including ourselves) are mixing and matching from the two channels.

Admittedly something this low down in the stack is probably ok to do this with. However, I haven't dug in and tried to see what that would mean yet. Sadly the safest way would be to ensure the tk package is still at least a metapackage pulling in these two pieces, which sort of defeats the point.

[bjlittle]

Great, and thanks for the speedy response @msarahan and @jakirkham

Is it while keeping this as an open issue?

Happy for you to close, if you consider it not applicable.

[jakirkham]

Either way.

I'm sure others might ask this same question so it is nice for documentation purposes and this feedstock isn't being overwhelmed with issues.

OTOH I don't think anything is going to happen with this for a while due to the problems listed (even though it is desirable).