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June 2001, slide 1The (Active) State of TclThe (Active) State of Tcl
June 2001, slide 2The (Active) State of Tcl
The (Active) State of Tcl
Jeff Hobbs
ActiveState Corporation
June 2001, slide 3The (Active) State of Tcl
Agenda
Introduction
What has happened…
Developments in the Tcl community
Developments of the Tcl/Tk core
Future directions
June 2001, slide 4The (Active) State of Tcl
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)
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
June 2001, slide 5The (Active) State of Tcl
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)
4. Tcl Core Team formed (August)
4. Tcl Core Team formed (August)
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)
7. Tcl’Europe 2001 (June)
9. 8th Tcl Conference (July)
9. 8th Tcl Conference (July)
8.4a3 June8.4a3 June
8. ASPN/Tcl Launch (July)
8. ASPN/Tcl Launch (July)
……3. Tcl’Europe 2000
(June)
3. Tcl’Europe 2000 (June)
R.I.P
You are here
June 2001, slide 6The (Active) State of Tcl
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 7The (Active) State of Tcl
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 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
June 2001, slide 8The (Active) State of Tcl
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:
June 2001, slide 9The (Active) State of Tcl
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 10The (Active) State of Tcl
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
Daniel Steffen Jim Ingham Kevin Kenny Jeff Hobbs
Miguel Sofer Andreas Kupries Rolf Schroedter Vince Darley
Don Porter Jan Nijtmans Donal Fellows Mo DeJong
June 2001, slide 11The (Active) State of Tcl
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
June 2001, slide 12The (Active) State of Tcl
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 13The (Active) State of Tcl
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 14The (Active) State of Tcl
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 IDEhttp://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Downloads/Komodo/More
ASPN/Tclhttp://aspn.ActiveState.com/ASPN/Tcl/
Commercial support infrastructurehttp://www.ActiveState.com/Products/Enterprise/TclDirect/
Professional services: training and consulting
June 2001, slide 15The (Active) State of Tcl
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 16The (Active) State of Tcl
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 17The (Active) State of Tcl
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 18The (Active) State of Tcl
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 19The (Active) State of Tcl
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 20The (Active) State of Tcl
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 … … …
