Comparison of ways to install Tk

[Eric Christopherson]

In the recent discussion of installing Tk in a Windows Ruby
installation, I learned of the existence of tk-win. I already knew
about tk_as_gem and ffi-tk.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each one?

Also, I'm unclear on which platforms they run on. I assume tk-win is
only for Windows. How about the other two?

 

[Roger Pack]

In the recent discussion of installing Tk in a Windows Ruby
installation, I learned of the existence of tk-win. I already knew
about tk_as_gem and ffi-tk.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each one?

Also, I'm unclear on which platforms they run on. I assume tk-win is
only for Windows. How about the other two?

tk-win is "brand new" and is basically tk_as_gem for 1.9.x

Cheers!
-r

 

[Michael Fellinger]

In the recent discussion of installing Tk in a Windows Ruby
installation, I learned of the existence of tk-win. I already knew
about tk_as_gem and ffi-tk.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each one?

Also, I'm unclear on which platforms they run on. I assume tk-win is
only for Windows. How about the other two?

FFI::Tk runs on linux and windows, also on osx with X11.
All it needs is the tcl/tk .dll/.so/.dylib, and it has the most common
paths setup already, and it doesn't require compilation.
It also depends on Ruby 1.9, both in syntax and encoding support, so
MRI 1.9.1 is the platform supported best, followed by jruby --1.9.
The API is a drop-in replacement for ruby-tk, because I think that
ruby-tk is way too excessive with aliasing and convenience-methods.
All FFI:Tk tries to give you is a 1:1 mapping of Ruby:Tk and some
basic Tcl, so it should be easy to use.