These days perl/Tk is developed on Linux so things should work.
Nick uses SuSE Distributions, currently using SuSE 9.0.
All SuSE's /usr/bin/perl (perl >= perl5.8.0) should work.
SuSE's fontconfig is fine for building with XFT=1, but
there are some dodgy TrueType fonts in its set.
RedHat is more variable. Nick uses this version under RedHat7.* and
RedHat9.0 at work. RedHat9.0 will build with XFT=1 but scalable
fonts installed by default are limited.
Main snag on RedHat is that /usr/bin/perl tends to be a RedHat
patched version rather than an approved perl release. Its 5.8.0 has
bugs which mean that it is worse that official perl5.8.0 in UTF-8
locales - but UTF-8 locales are default on RedHat :-(
Nick has installed this version with RedHat's perl on RedHat9.
BUT there are a lot of reports that it doesn't work. If the problem
hits you try this:
1. Delete the unpacked version that had trouble - the bug mangles
some files.
2. Change to a non UTF-8 locale. i.e.
echo $LANG # find out what your locale is
export LANG=en_GB # what above printed but without UTF-8 bit
3. tar xzf Tk804.026.tar.gz # re-extract
cd Tk804.026
4. perl Makefile.PL # normal build
make
make test
(Steps 3 & 4 can be done using CPAN module provided you stay
in non-UTF-8 locale.)
5. Optionally:
export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 # or original from step 2
make test # prove it works in the locale
6. make install
Or just get perl5.8.3 kit from CPAN and build a real perl.
Other issues are that distributions vary in the fonts they come
with and window managers vary by user AND distribution.
So a t/entry.t and t/listbox.t in particular (which are new tests
compared to Tk800 series) sometimes fail a few subtests.
Sometimes when run like:
perl -Mblib t/entry.t
they will pass :-(
Nick Ing-Simmons 2004/03/18
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Debian Linux:
The libx11-dev and x-dev packages are necessary to compile Perl/Tk.
The libfreetype6-dev, libxrender-dev and libxft-dev packages are
necessary to compile with XFT=1.