2. July 2002 The (Active) State of Tcl

3. July 2002 The (Active) State of Tcl Jeff Hobbs ActiveState Corporation

4. July 2002 Agenda Introduction What has happened… Developments in the Tcl community Developments of the Tcl/Tk core Future directions

5. July 2002 About ActiveState ActiveState provides multi-language, cross- platform software & services –Tcl, Perl, PHP, Python, XSLT –Linux, Solaris, Windows, HP-UX, AIX, … We make it easy to use new technologies –Web Services and.NET Mission: Make Programming Easier –Our IDEs –Active distributions –ASPN

6. July 2002 8.0 Aug History of Tcl 198819891990199119921993199519971998 100100010,000 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 500,000 1994199919962000 6.Scriptics/Ajuba Acquired by Interwoven (Nov.) 2001 7.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 … …

7. July 2002 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) 20002001 8.3.3 May 8.3.0 Feb 8.3.1 Apr 8.3.2 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) 11. ActiveTcl 8.3.4.3 (July) ( 8.4.0 ) 3.Tcl’Europe 2000 (June) R.I.P You are here 8.4a3 July 2002 8.4b1 8.4a3 Mar 8.3.4 Oct 10. ActiveState TclPro (Dec) 12. ActiveState TclPro 2.0 beta (July)

8. July 2002 Tcl Usage Tcl usage is still growing Used extensively for mission-critical applications: –Cisco, Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, etc.: Automated hardware testing Coordinate different pieces of test equipment Tcl soon to be standard on all Cisco routers –AOL Digital City, Travelocity: Dynamic Web content Integrate information from different sources Content developers are not programmers

9. July 2002 Tcl Usage, Cont’d More mission-critical applications: –NBC: Digital broadcast control system Mix programming content, control transmission through satellites to local stations –Pixar: Used in animation tools (RenderMan software) Technical directors write Tcl scripts to animate characters –Shell Oil: Real-time control for offshore oil platforms Coordinate, manage various systems

10. July 2002 Status As of 8 th Tcl Conference At O’Reilly Open Source Convention, San Diego, July 2001 Tcl/Tk 8.3.3 was the stable version (8.3.x now standard in Linux distributions) 8.4a3 was just released ActiveState was just establishing with Tcl expertise

11. July 2002 Formed in August 2000 with 14 charter members based on community voting to collectively manage development of the core 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

12. July 2002 TCT: TIP Initiatives TIP page for Tcl http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/ http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/ 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 over 100 TIPs –Divided into process, informational & project TIPs TCT discussion is open on the public mailing list: tcl-core@lists.sourceforge.net

13. July 2002 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

14. July 2002 The Maintainers… Tcl (TIP #24): Tk (TIP #30): Other contributors as well 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

15. July 2002 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: http://tcl.sf.net/ http://tcl.sf.net/ –Further open source work not continued at Interwoven Most other projects at Ajuba moved to SourceForge R.I.P

16. July 2002 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

17. July 2002 Tcl @ 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

18. July 2002 ActiveState and Tcl ActiveState provides the Tcl community with… –Improvements to open source Tcl core –Host of the Tcl Developer Xchange –Commercial support infrastructure http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Enterprise/TclDirect/ –Professional services for Tcl (TclDirect) –High quality development tools ActiveTcl http://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Tcl/ ASPN Tcl (TclPro + Komodo IDE) http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/ASPN_Tcl/

19. July 2002 ActiveTcl 8.3.4.3 Based on the 8.3.4 Tcl core Enhanced with several popular extensions –[incr Tcl], TclX, expect, tcllib, Bwidgets, iwidgets, tktable, tkcon A standard batteries-included distribution for Tcl users Code repository (still) in the works

20. July 2002 Tcl Developer Xchange

21. July 2002 Tcl Cookbook

22. July 2002 ASPN Tcl: TclPro + More Introduced December 2001 Resuscitated 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

23. July 2002 ASPN Tcl: Komodo An IDE for scripting languages –Mozilla framework based –Cross-platform (Windows & Linux) –Modern IDE features –Several unique Tcl editing features –Tight integration of TclPro tools with Komodo –Komodo 2.0 in development

24. July 2002 Komodo IDE

25. July 2002 ASPN Tcl: Future Continuing development of Tcl tools TclPro 2.0 now in beta –Enhanced debugger with integrated checker –Code coverage and hot-spot analysis tool –Added user-friendly GUIs to Wrapper and Compiler –Checker updated for 8.4 (and corrected for 8.3) GUI Builder in development –Based loosely on SpecTcl –Will be integrated with other tools

26. July 2002 In the Community… The Tcl’ers Wiki has increased in activity: –http://wiki.tcl.tk/ –Now with interactive chat The Tcl Developer Xchange official URL: –http://www.tcl.tk/http://www.tcl.tk/ –http://tcl.ActiveState.com/http://tcl.ActiveState.com/ Tcl-URL! continues to provide weekly news: –http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/ –Or subscribe to tcl-announce@listserv.activestate.com Lots of extension updates Check out the wiki!

27. July 2002 Tcl/Tk Today Download rate steady: –Windows: 55% –Unix: 40% –Mac: 5% Only patch releases since 2000 Stable release now at 8.3.4 –Completely new I/O core (added in 8.3.2) –High degree of stability –Improved locale support in Tk Ports now exist for Windows/CE and Palm ActiveTcl downloads Data point: -~2x ActivePython d/ls -~1/7 th ActivePerl d/ls Data point: -~2x ActivePython d/ls -~1/7 th ActivePerl d/ls

28. July 2002 Tcl/Tk 8.4 Development release, now at 8.4b1-rc Has just been feature-frozen New spinbox, labelframe, panedwindow widgets Several core feature enhancements –VFS, lset, command tracing Significant work on performance –Near or better than 8.0, with unicode and thread safety. Inclusion of numerous TIPs More later in 8.4 overview

29. July 2002 User Poll: Versions Versions in use –Pre-8.0 –8.0 –8.2 –8.3 –8.4 Response (out of 65) –0 –8 –1 –64 –6

30. July 2002 User Poll: Platforms Develop/Deploy: –Windows –Macintosh OS 9 –Macintosh OS X –Linux –Solaris –HP-UX –Other unix … Response (out of 65) –60%/30% –0/2 –0/1 –50%/50% –8/30% –6/10 –8

31. July 2002 Tcl’Europe 2001 Hamburg, June 8-9, 2001 14 Original papers and tutorials –From using Tcl with Cobol to Tcl on the Web to Tcl on a PDA… Thanks to Carsten Zerbst http://www.tu-harburg.de/skf/tcltk/ http://www.tu-harburg.de/skf/tcltk/

32. July 2002 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 Demos to follow

33. July 2002 Ideas in the Pipeline (More) improved Tcl performance Archive file support (.jar/.zip) Larger source / binary distributions Tcl Installer Stand-alone executable support in core (*wrap) 64-bit overhaul Smaller, modular core Drag & Drop Windows Tk Performance Printing support Tk abstraction layer (TkGS) Megawidgets (roll your own) New Widgets …

34. July 2002 Conclusion Tcl core is robust, feature-rich –… and still pushing the boundaries Future emphasis on packages and modularization Community is the key to an even more successful future