Open Source Convention 2001 The (Active) State of Tcl

Open Source Convention 2001

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


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


8.0 Aug8.0 Aug

History of Tcl

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 1997 1998

100 1000 10,000 1M ?100,000

2. Open source distributionsfrom U.C. Berkeley:

• Easy GUIs under Unix• Extensible applications

2. Open source distributionsfrom 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

1. Tcl created as general-purpose command/scripting language by John Ousterhout

500,000

1994 19991996 2000

6. Scriptics/Ajuba Acquired by Interwoven (Nov.)

6. Scriptics/Ajuba Acquired by Interwoven (Nov.)

2001

7. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services

7. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services

5. Tcl Core Team formed (August)


6.0 Sept6.0 Sept 7.0 Sept7.0 Sept 7.4 July7.4 July 7.6 Oct7.6 Oct 8.1 Apr8.1 Apr

8.2 Aug8.2 Aug

8.3 Feb8.3 Feb

You are here


Recent History of Tcl

5. Scriptics/Ajuba acquired by Interwoven; Tcl/Tk core moves to SourceForge; TclPro open sourced (Nov.)

5. Scriptics/Ajuba acquired by Interwoven; Tcl/Tk core moves to SourceForge; TclPro open sourced (Nov.)

6. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services (Feb)

6. ActiveState introduces Tcl support and services (Feb)



2000 2001

8.3.3 May8.3.3 May

8.3.0 Feb8.3.0 Feb

8.3.1 Apr8.3.1 Apr 8.3.2 Aug8.3.2 Aug

8.4a1 June8.4a1 June 8.4a2 Nov8.4a2 Nov

1. Tcl’2K in Austin (Feb)1. Tcl’2K in Austin (Feb)

2. Scriptics becomes Ajuba (May)

2. Scriptics becomes Ajuba (May)

7. Tcl’Europe 2001 (June)


9. 8th Tcl Conference (July)

9. 8th Tcl Conference (July)

8. ActiveTcl 8.3.3.2 (July)

8. ActiveTcl 8.3.3.2 (July)

……3. Tcl’Europe 2000

(June)


R.I.P

You are here

8.4a3 July8.4a3 July


Version Usage

OusterVoter

8.4 (dev) 7-8

8.1 - 8.3 (stable) 95%

8.0 10

7.6 or earlier 10


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)

OusterVoter %

First-time 80

2-3 15

4+ 5


• Formed in August 2000 with 14 charter members based on community voting to collectively manage development of the core

Now… Tcl Core Team

Mo DeJong Andreas Kupries

Donal Fellows Karl Lehenbauer

Mark Harrison Michael McLennan

D. Richard Hipp Jan Nijtmans

Jeffrey Hobbs John Ousterhout

George Howlett Don Porter

Jim Ingham Brent Welch

Kevin Kenny


TCT: TIP Initiatives

• Started TIP process for Tclhttp://www.purl.org/tcl/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 47 … 48 … 49 … 50 … 51 TIPs– 6 process, 9 informational, 36 project TIPs

• TCT discussion is open on the public mailing list:[email protected]


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


The Maintainers…

• Tcl (TIP #24):

• Tk (TIP #30):Allen Flick Peter Spjuth Todd Helfter Jeff Hobbs

George Smith Frédéric Bonnet Kevin Griffin Vince Darley

Chengye Mao Jan Nijtmans Donal Fellows Mo DeJong

Joe English YOUR NAME HERE

Daniel Steffen Jim Ingham Kevin Kenny Jeff Hobbs

Miguel Sofer Andreas Kupries Rolf Schroedter Vince Darley

Don Porter Jan Nijtmans Donal Fellows Mo DeJong


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

R.I.P


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


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


ActiveState and Tcl

• ActiveState provides the Tcl community with…– Improvements to open source Tcl core

• ActiveTclhttp://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Tcl/

– High quality development tools• Komodo IDE

http://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Downloads/Komodo/More

– Host of the Tcl Developer Xchange– Commercial support infrastructure

http://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Enterprise/TclDirect/

– Professional services for Tcl


ActiveTcl 8.3.3.2

• Based on the 8.3.3 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


Komodo IDE


Tcl Developer Xchange


Tcl Cookbook


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


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


comp.lang.tcl(.announce)

• As helpful and friendly as ever

• Accessible via the web– http://groups.google.com/– http://www.etin.com/

• Free newsgroup access– mirror.utcorp.net


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 8.3.3

– Completely new I/O core (for 8.3.2)– High degree of stability– Improved locale support in Tk

OusterVoter Dev Ship

Windows 50% 70%

Unix 80% 90%

Mac 3% 3%


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


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 for Carsten Zerbst

http://www.tu-harburg.de/skf/tcltk/


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


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~60-65 attendees

Documents

Open Source Convention 2001 The (Active) State of Tcl