Open Source Convention 2001 The (Active) State of Tcl

Open Source Convention 2001 The (Active) State of Tcl Jeff Hobbs ActiveState Corporation

Open Source Convention 2001 Agenda Introduction What has happened… Developments in the Tcl community Developments of the Tcl/Tk core Future directions

Open Source Convention 2001 About ActiveState ActiveState provides multi-language, cross- platform software & services –Tcl, Perl, PHP, Python, XSLT –Linux, Solaris, Windows We make it easy to use new technologies –Web Services and.NET Mission: Make Programming Easier –Our IDEs –Active distributions –ASPN

Open Source Convention 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

Open Source Convention 2001 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. ActiveTcl (July) … … 3.Tcl’Europe 2000 (June) R.I.P You are here 8.4a3 July

Open Source Convention 2001 Version Usage OusterVoter 8.4 (dev) (stable)95% or earlier10

Open Source Convention 2001 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) OusterVoter% First-time

Open Source Convention 2001 Formed in August 2000 with 14 charter members based on community voting 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 Kevin Kenny

Open Source Convention 2001 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 47 … 48 … 49 … 50 … 51 TIPs –6 process, 9 informational, 36 project TIPs TCT discussion is open on the public mailing list:

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl/Tk Maintainers Tcl/Tk maintainers are separate from the TCT 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

Open Source Convention 2001 The Maintainers… Tcl (TIP #24): Tk (TIP #30): Allen FlickPeter SpjuthTodd HelfterJeff Hobbs George SmithFrédéric BonnetKevin GriffinVince Darley Chengye MaoJan NijtmansDonal FellowsMo DeJong Joe EnglishYOURNAMEHERE Daniel SteffenJim InghamKevin KennyJeff Hobbs Miguel SoferAndreas KupriesRolf SchroedterVince Darley Don PorterJan NijtmansDonal FellowsMo DeJong

Open Source Convention 2001 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

Open Source Convention 2001 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

Open Source Convention 2001 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

Open Source Convention 2001 ActiveState and Tcl ActiveState provides the Tcl community with… –Improvements to open source Tcl core ActiveTcl –High quality development tools Komodo IDE –Host of the Tcl Developer Xchange –Commercial support infrastructure –Professional services for Tcl

Open Source Convention 2001 ActiveTcl Based on the Tcl core Enhanced with several popular extensions –[incr Tcl], TclX, expect, tcllib, Bwidgets, tktable, tkcon The first step towards a standard BI distribution Code repository in the works

Open Source Convention 2001 Komodo IDE

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl Developer Xchange

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl Cookbook

Open Source Convention 2001 ASPN/TclPro Tentative!! Resuscitate TclPro as a commercial quality development environment –Debugger: source-level debugger with nice GUI –Checker: find errors without running application –Wrapper: create self-contained applications for distribution –Compiler: protect your source code Tight integration of TclPro tools with Komodo –Leverage Komodo to make TclPro an IDE

Open Source Convention 2001 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

Open Source Convention 2001 comp.lang.tcl(.announce) As helpful and friendly as ever Accessible via the web – – Free newsgroup access –mirror.utcorp.net

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl/Tk Today Download rate steady (~30,000 / month) –Windows: 55% –Unix: 40% –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 OusterVoterDevShip Windows50%70% Unix80%90% Mac3%

Open Source Convention 2001 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 –panedwindow, labelframe widgets –TEA 2.0

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl’Europe 2001 Hamburg, June 8-9, Original papers and tutorials –From using Tcl with Cobol to Tcl on the Web to Tcl on a PDA… Thanks for Carsten Zerbst

Open Source Convention 2001 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? ActiveState will continue to work with the Tcl community and build more Tcl related products Open discussion to follow

Open Source Convention 2001 Tcl Roadmap Poll Improve Tcl performance [10] Archive file support (.jar/.zip) [3] Larger source distributions [6] Larger binary distributions [20] Tcl Installer [20] Versioning change [33%] Core OO support [50%] Smaller, modular core [30] Drag & Drop [35] Windows Tk Performance [10] Printing support [90%] Tk abstraction layer (TkGS) [25] Megawidgets (roll your own) [30] New Widgets [60%] Themes [3] CTAN [95%] ~60-65 attendees