Re: tcl/tk 9.0?

[steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn)]

I use Tcl/Tk extensively for online service provision, but have found
it simpler to use Tclkit, the one-file bundled-up executable rather
than an installation.  My NetBSD-9.2 machines have Tcl/Tk-8.6.8
installed as binary packages though.

A bit like NetBSD, Tcl/Tk is slow to change its major release
number.  Major events were a decent Windows version with 8.0 in
the early '90s, which made cross-platform development a reality,
a stable, very dependable TCP/IP, long-running release at 8.4, the
introduction of the dictionary data type at 8.5.  I currently use
an 8.6.9 tclkit binary as my workhorse.  9.0 is the frist release
for a very long time that will break some existing code, so I'm
being tentative.

Tcl/Tk got big in the '90s.  I have a mountain of code developed since
1992, much of it still in daily use supporting customers.  A prominent
virtue of Tcl/Tk is that it makes for very fast prototyping, and the
journey from prototype to finished code is short.  I wrote my own
VAT-reporting (sales tax, only more complicated) software swiftly,
thanks to the rich collection of libraries and contributed packages.
It worked first time.  You will find TCL interpreters are used by
other languaqe systems, and of course Tk provides UI graphics to,
amongst others, Perl.

I'm not expert enough with pkgsrc to be of much help, but I am
in touch with some of the Tcl/Tk core team and a provider of tclkit
executables.  So I might be of use as a social facilitator and
translator.

--
Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost>

You wrote:
> 
> Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost> writes:
> 
> > Do we have someone knowledgeable in tcl/tk?
> >
> > 9.0 is out.
> >
> > In pkgsrc we have lang/tcl85 (8.5.19) and lang/tcl (8.6.14), and
> > x11/tk85 (8.5.19) and x11/tk (8.6.14).
> >
> > Is the upgrade path stable enough that someone(tm-not-me) can update
> > lang/tcl to 9.0 and it will just work, or do we need a tcl90 package?
> 
> A really good question.
> 
> My impression is that there is a lot of code that uses tcl and that
> significant amounts of it are not really maintained.  I can't remember
> right now whether tcl was big in the 80s or the 90s...
> 
> If someone(tm) stages a lang/tcl update to 9 in wip, then it is possible
> to test-build the tcl-depending stuff and try it.
> 
> I use pyGPSClient, probably not yet packaged, that wants py-tk.
> 
> Another question is why we have tcl85 still.  I don't mean to be
> deletionist, really just asking if there are packages that need it.  If
> so, that's a clue that tcl/tk have enough API stability issues that
> continuing to version is likely needed.
> 
>