This announcement affects only users of the following Tcl packages:
These packages are not thread-safe and have seen little development over the last decade, therefore we advise against using them in new TOPE code. Existing TOPE code should gradually migrate away from them.
Over years we have seen a number of problem reports caused by these packages, and each time the investigation proved to be very costly. CCS5 itself does not use Iwidgets and Itk; use of Itcl in CCS5 is restricted to only GSFE drivers.
For object-oriented programming, Itcl can be replaced with TclOO (official reference, extensive tutorial), which is better maintained and thread-safe.
For GUI widgets, Iwidgets can be replaced with tk/ttk. If you have trouble finding a suitable alternative for Iwidgets functionality, please do not hesitate to reach out.
We will continue to include these packages in CCS5 & TSC installers for the sake of backwards compatibility, but this fact should not be interpreted as an endorsement. Unfortunately, Terma will no longer support customers for issues related to these packages, referring you to Tcl maintainers instead.