1 / 20

The (Active) State of Tcl

The (Active) State of Tcl. The (Active) State of Tcl Jeff Hobbs ActiveState Corporation. Agenda. Introduction What has happened… Developments in the Tcl community Developments of the Tcl/Tk core Future directions. You are here. History of Tcl.

terah
Download Presentation

The (Active) State of Tcl

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

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

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

  3. Agenda • Introduction • What has happened… • Developments in the Tcl community • Developments of the Tcl/Tk core • Future directions June 2001, slide 3

  4. You are here History of Tcl 7. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services 1. Tcl created as general-purpose command/scripting language by John Ousterhout • 4. Scriptics formed: • Evolve and extend Tcl platform • Create development tools 6.0 Sept 7.0 Sept 7.4 July 7.6 Oct 8.0 Aug 8.1 Apr 8.3 Feb 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 8.2 Aug 5. Tcl Core Team formed (August) • 2. Open source distributions • from U.C. Berkeley: • Easy GUIs under Unix • Extensible applications 6. Scriptics/Ajuba Acquired by Interwoven (Nov.) • 3. Tcl enhanced at Sun Microsystems: • Windows, Macintosh ports • Web/Internet support • Java support 1M ? 100 1000 10,000 100,000 500,000 June 2001, slide 4

  5. R.I.P You are here Recent History of Tcl 1. Tcl’2K in Austin (Feb) 6. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services (Feb) 9. 8th Tcl Conference (July) 2. Scriptics becomes Ajuba (May) 8.3.1 Apr 8.3.2 Aug 8.3.3 May 2000 2001 8.3.0 Feb 8.4a3 June 8.4a1 June 8.4a2 Nov … 7. Tcl’Europe 2001 (June) 3. Tcl’Europe 2000 (June) 8. ASPN/Tcl Launch (July) 5. Scriptics/Ajuba acquired by Interwoven; Tcl/Tk core moves to SourceForge; TclPro open sourced (Nov.) 4. Tcl Core Team formed (August) June 2001, slide 5

  6. Status as of 7th Tcl Conference • Austin, February 2000 • Tcl/Tk 8.3.0 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) June 2001, slide 6

  7. Now… Tcl Core Team • Formed in August 2000 with 14 charter members based on community voting: • Formed to collectively manage development of the core June 2001, slide 7

  8. TCT: TIP Initiatives • Started TIP process for Tclhttp://www.cs.man.ac.uk/fellowsd-bin/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 34 TIPs (9 active project TIPs) • Tcl/Tk maintainers are a separate group • TCT discussion is open on the public mailing list:tcl-core@lists.sourceforge.net June 2001, slide 8

  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 June 2001, slide 9

  10. The Maintainers… • Tcl (TIP #24): • Tk (TIP #30): June 2001, slide 10

  11. R.I.P 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/ • TclPro open sourced:http://tclpro.sf.net/ • Further open source work not continued at Interwoven • Most other projects at Ajuba moved to SourceForge June 2001, slide 11

  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 June 2001, slide 12

  13. 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 June 2001, slide 13

  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 http://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Downloads/Komodo/More • ASPN/Tcl http://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Tcl/ • Commercial support infrastructure http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Enterprise/TclDirect/ • Professional services: training and consulting June 2001, slide 14

  15. In the Community… • The Tcl’ers Wiki has increased in activity: • http://www.purl.org/tcl/wiki • Now with interactive chat • The Tcl Developer Xchange has moved: • http://www.purl.org/net/tclhome • http://tcl.ActiveState.com/ • Tcl-URL! continues to provide weekly news: • http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/ • http://tcl.ActiveState.com/tclurl/ • Lots of extension updates June 2001, slide 15

  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 8.3.3 • Completely new I/O core (for 8.3.2) • High degree of stability • Improved locale support in Tk June 2001, slide 16

  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 June 2001, slide 17

  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… June 2001, slide 18

  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 June 2001, slide 19

  20. 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 … … … Tcl Roadmap Poll June 2001, slide 20

More Related