The problems are in how AOLserver instantiates interpreters. Quoting Zoran Vasiljevic in the "new AOL-based thread-happy mem allocator in 8.4" thread in the AOLserver list:
"The AOLserver does seed the the connection
interpreter with commands introspected from within loaded initialized
startup interpreter. It just copies (blindly) all command structures
found in the initial interp, which causes quite a few problems with
Tcl packages planting commands with associated delete callbacks.
So the problem is not AOLserver<->Tcl integration. The problem is
how the AOLserver does handle Tcl extensions and their registered
commands. There is nothing Tcl (you) can do about it. But there is
something AOLserver (Kris/Jim/community) can do about.
I've made a patch for 3.4 which corrects above problems. I'm just
qurious to find out if/how/when can it be included in the core
server distro."
To me this is one of the serious problems with the architecture right now because it basically alienates AOLserver from the Tcl world to a certain extent. We can't use the many available Tcl modules that would provide significant functionality, in AOLserver without some ugly hacks.
I and Dave have tried reviving that thread and trying to get people to discuss those issues, but we have failed miserably. I'm not knowledgeable enough of AOLserver and Tcl internals to fix the problem, but it appears that this is not an issue for the DCI (AOL team that works on AOLserver) folks, since I haven't seen them worrying about it.
If anybody would like to maybe form some sort of "task force" to study and fix this problem, this would be a good time do it. I was hoping AOLserver 4 would have that fixed, but so far it has not.
