Installing Tcl for macOS

Requirements

  • 50 MB for the final install
  • macOS 10.7 (Lion) or later
  • Intel processor or compatible

ActiveTcl is distributed on macOS as a disk image (.dmg) file. The disk image contains an installer package (.pkg) bundle that installs ActiveTcl.

  1. Download the ActiveTcl disk image (ActiveTcl-<version>-<platform>.dmg).
  2. If the browser does not automatically mount the disk image and open the mounted folder in Finder, double-click ActiveTcl-<version>-<platform>.dmg to do so.
  3. Double-click the ActiveTcl installer package (ActiveTcl-<version>.pkg) to start the installation.
  4. Follow the Installer prompts. The installer will ask for administrative authentication if the current user does not have administrative privileges.
  5. After installation is complete, you may eject the ActiveTcl disk image and move ActiveTcl-<version>-<platform>.dmg to the Trash. macOS includes a non-interactive command line interface to Apple’s Installer. To install the ActiveTcl Apple installer from the command line:
$ sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/ActiveTcl-<version>/ActiveTcl-<version>.pkg -target /

More information on the command line interface to Installer can be found in its man page.

ActiveTcl executables (wish, tclsh and tkcon) are installed in /usr/local/bin. If this directory is not in the user’s PATH environment variable, it can be added manually to the .profile or .bash_ profile file in the user’s home directory. For example:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
export PATH

Uninstall

Run the uninstall script provided by ActiveTcl and installed under /Library/Receipts/ActiveTcl-<version>/Contents/Resources/uninstall. This will remove all files, symbolic links and directories created during installation, after the user has confirmed his intentions. For example:

$ cd /Library/Receipts/ActiveTcl-<version>/Contents/Resources
$ sudo ./uninstall
... List of files, links, etc. which are removed ...

Note: On Snow Leopard and higher the uninstall script is installed under /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Versions/<version>/Resources/Scripts/uninstall instead. Apple reorganized the directories for receipt storage and eliminated any space for 3rd-party files from it.