Notes on Jeff Hobbs ActiveState of Tcl2008 talk. (MC's notes, but please add/enhance...)
Reviewed Tcl history...
As of Tcl'2007:
- September 24-28 New Orleans
- 8.4.16 was the standard stable version
- 8.4 now base standard in all distros
- 5 years since 8.4.0
- Numerous enhancements and additions
- Getting long in the tooth
- 8.5b1 released
- 8.6 vs 9.0
- Primary topics: 8.5 finalization, food ...
Reviewed formation/history of the Tcl Core Team
Reviewed Tcl Improvement Proposal (TIPs)...
- Currently 335 TIPs (divided into process, informational and project TIPs)
- TIP page for Tcl: http://tip.tcl.tk/
Maintainers:
- Separate from TCT (though substantial overlap)
- Maintainers oversee a specific area of the core as defined in TIP #16 (Tcl) and TIP #26 (Tk)
- Assist, but not soley responsible for fixing bugs, adding docs, etc.
- Responsible for reviewing code and approving code changes to their area
- Open to anyone willing to learn the core; New volunteers always welcome
Tcl at ActiveState:
- Established 1997
- Current tagline "Dyamic Tools for Dynamic Languages" (Jeff likes older tagline: "Programming for the people" but that doesn't fly as well in the enterprise)
- Jeff Hobbs and Andreas Kupries hired in 2001
- Wealth of scripting knowledge at ActiveState; besides Tcl, Perl, Python, XML/XSLT, etc.
- Acquired by Sophos September 2003; freed in February 2006
- ActiveStateremains dedicated to dynamic languages--collectively a wealth of knowledge
ActiveState provides the Tcl community with:
Now easier to download ActiveTcl--one single download page, no registration hoops to go through, etc. BOOK ActiveState Tcl Cookbook. Mailing list archives.
ActiveTcl 8.4.19:
- Released September 2008
- Many popular extensions: XOTcl, incr Tcl, TclX, expect, tcllib, tklib, Bwidgets, Iwidgets, tktable, tkcon, tile, SQLite, etc.
- TEApot code repository via teacup
ActiveTcl 8.5.5:
- Based on the 8.5.5 Tcl core
- Released October 2008--on the conference USB key
- Distributed with fewer extensions (as compared to ActiveTcl 8.4); rest available via teacup
- Considered the default download
- Available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows (all builds are fully threaded)
ActiveTcl 8.6.0.0 Beta 1: (called Beta because ActiveState doesn't like to release things with Alpha names)
- Based on Tcl 8.6a3 Tcl core
- Not yet released--on conference USB key
- Similar to ActiveTcl 8.5 extension set
- More discussion on 8.6 to follow
The TEApot:
- Binary code repository in the style of ActivePerl's PPM
- Fully populated for ActiveTcl platforms
- Make use of Tcl module system (allows zip archives with special teapot.txt)
- Repository is web visible, but rough
- Downloads index--local searches (against a SQLite database)
- Integrated with TclApp package searching (TKD 5)
Tcl Dev Kit 5:
- Released Monday (in time for the conference)
- Enhanced static syntax analysis
- Added 8.6 support
- Supports multi-architecture starkits, x-platform starkpacks
- Includes improved/revamped versions of the TclPro tools; checker is extensible, plus some additional new tools (that weren't in TclPro)
Komodo 5:
- Professional IDE for dynamic languages
- Cross platform (Windows, Linux, and OS X)
- Deep upport for Tcl, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby and more
- Added upport for git, hg, and bazaar (beyond cvs, p4, svn support that was already in version 4)
- Faster and slicker UI