The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 1 The (Active) State of Tcl

June 2001, slide 2 The (Active) State of Tcl Jeff Hobbs ActiveState Corporation

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 3 Agenda  Introduction  What has happened…  Developments in the Tcl community  Developments of the Tcl/Tk core  Future directions

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide Aug History of Tcl ,000 1M ? 100,000 2.Open source distributions from U.C. Berkeley: Easy GUIs under Unix Extensible applications 2.Open source distributions from U.C. Berkeley: Easy GUIs under Unix Extensible applications 3.Tcl enhanced at Sun Microsystems: Windows, Macintosh ports Web/Internet support Java support 3.Tcl enhanced at Sun Microsystems: Windows, Macintosh ports Web/Internet support Java support 4.Scriptics formed: Evolve and extend Tcl platform Create development tools 4.Scriptics formed: Evolve and extend Tcl platform Create development tools 1.Tcl created as general-purpose command/scripting language by John Ousterhout 500, Scriptics/Ajuba Acquired by Interwoven (Nov.) ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services 5.Tcl Core Team formed (August) 6.0 Sept 7.0 Sept 7.4 July 7.6 Oct 8.1 Apr 8.2 Aug 8.3 Feb You are here

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 5 Recent History of Tcl 5.Scriptics/Ajuba acquired by Interwoven; Tcl/Tk core moves to SourceForge; TclPro open sourced (Nov.) 6.ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services (Feb) 4.Tcl Core Team formed (August) May Feb Apr Aug 8.4a1 June 8.4a2 Nov 1.Tcl’2K in Austin (Feb) 2.Scriptics becomes Ajuba (May) 7.Tcl’Europe 2001 (June) 9.8 th Tcl Conference (July) 8.4a3 June 8. ASPN/Tcl Launch (July) … … 3.Tcl’Europe 2000 (June) R.I.P You are here

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 6 Status as of 7 th Tcl Conference  Austin, February 2000  Tcl/Tk was the stable version (8.3.x now part of Red Hat and SuSE standard distributions)  Scriptics had released TclPro 1.3 (not yet Ajuba)  2 core maintainers (Jeff & Eric)

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 7  Formed in August 2000 with 14 charter members based on community voting:  Formed to collectively manage development of the core Now… Tcl Core Team Mo DeJongAndreas Kupries Donal FellowsKarl Lehenbauer Mark HarrisonMichael McLennan D. Richard HippJan Nijtmans Jeffrey HobbsJohn Ousterhout George HowlettDon Porter Jim InghamBrent Welch

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 8 TCT: TIP Initiatives  Started TIP process for Tcl  TIPs are intended to guide and document development on the core  The focus is on new or changing features, not bugs  Voted on by the TCT following community discussion using the TYANNOTT process  Currently 34 TIPs (9 active project TIPs)  Tcl/Tk maintainers are a separate group  TCT discussion is open on the public mailing list:

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 9 Tcl/Tk Maintainers  Maintainers oversee a specific area of the core, as defined in TIP #16 for Tcl and TIP #23 for Tk  They assist, but are not solely responsible for, fixing bugs and adding documentation in their area  They are responsible for reviewing code and approving code changes to their area  Open to anyone willing to learn the core  New volunteers always welcome

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 10 The Maintainers…  Tcl (TIP #24):  Tk (TIP #30): Allen FlickPeter SpjuthTodd HelfterJeff Hobbs George SmithFrédéric BonnetKevin GriffinVince Darley Chengye MaoJan NijtmansDonal FellowsMo DeJong Daniel SteffenJim InghamKevin KennyJeff Hobbs Miguel SoferAndreas KupriesRolf SchroedterVince Darley Don PorterJan NijtmansDonal FellowsMo DeJong

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 11 Scriptics/Ajuba…  Scriptics became Ajuba Solutions in May 2000  New focus as a B2B infrastructure company  Interwoven: content management company in need of B2B…  Ajuba assimilated on Nov 1, 2000  Tcl/Tk moved to SourceForge:  TclPro open sourced:  Further open source work not continued at Interwoven  Most other projects at Ajuba moved to SourceForge R.I.P

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 12 Tcl/Tk at SourceForge  SourceForge provides a wealth of services for open source projects  Bug and patch database  Mailing lists  CVS repositories  File server  Web pages  Managed by TCT and Tcl/Tk maintainers  Not the Tcl Developer Xchange

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 13 ActiveState  ActiveState established 1997  “Programming for the People”  Used to be Perl specific  Well known ActivePerl distribution  Added Python and XML/XSLT expertise in 2000  Jeff Hobbs hired in Feb 2001  Andreas Kupries follows soon after  Other knowledgeable Tcl’ers on staff  Wealth of scripting knowledge at ActiveState

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 14 ActiveState and Tcl  ActiveState provides the Tcl community with…  Improvements to open source Tcl core  Host of the Tcl Developer Xchange  High quality development tools  Komodo IDE  ASPN/Tcl  Commercial support infrastructure  Professional services: training and consulting

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 15 In the Community…  The Tcl’ers Wiki has increased in activity:   Now with interactive chat  The Tcl Developer Xchange has moved:    Tcl-URL! continues to provide weekly news:    Lots of extension updates

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 16 Tcl/Tk Today  Download rate steady (~30,000 / month)  Windows: 60%  Unix: 45%  Mac: 5%  Only patch releases since last year  Stable release now at  Completely new I/O core (for 8.3.2)  High degree of stability  Improved locale support in Tk

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 17 Tcl/Tk 8.4  Experimental release, now at 8.4a3  Still in feature-add mode  New ‘spinbox’ widget  Several minor core feature enhancements  Significant work on performance  Near or better than 8.0, with unicode and thread safety.  Several TIPs in the pipeline  New virtual file system code  ‘lset’ command  TEA 2.0

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 18 Tcl’Europe 2001  Hamburg, June 2001  14 Original papers and tutorials  From using Tcl with Cobol to Tcl on the Web to Tcl on a PDA…

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 19 Future Directions  The core is guided by community input  Anyone can write a TIP  Anyone can be a core maintainer  What issues are most pressing?  Open discussion

The (Active) State of Tcl June 2001, slide 20 Tcl Roadmap Poll  Improve Tcl performance  Archive file support (.jar/.zip)  Larger source distributions  Larger binary distributions  Tcl Installer  Stand-alone executable support in core (*wrap)  …  Smaller, more modular core  Drag & Drop  Windows Tk Performance  Printing support  Tk abstraction layer (TkGS)  Megawidgets (roll your own)  New Widgets  …