Re: [TCLCORE] The Long and Winding Road.. to 8.6.0

[Alexandre F. <ale...@gm...>]

On 3/16/10, Donal K. Fellows <don...@ma...> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
>  I think I speak for just about everyone here when I say that I'd like to
>  see Tcl 8.6.0. After all, it will have many interesting features and
>  there's plenty of evidence that it is able to support intensive use
>  (e.g., the Wiki runs on 8.6). But we seem to be stuck at 8.6b1.1!
>
>  What needs to change?
>
>  Well, someone (several of us someones in fact) needs to pull their
>  finger out and get on with it! It's about as simple as that.
>
>  More specifically, we need to stop waiting on features before doing
>  another beta. The features that I see people being interested in are:
>
>   TIPs:
>     #348 on better information about errors
>     #357 on better ways to handle libraries
>     #362 on a fix for the [registry] command
>   Non-TIPs (included for "strategic" reasons which we can discuss):
>     Add basic IPv6 support (no official API changes)
>     Add the Thread package to tcl/pkgs/
>     Make the Unix [tk_getOpenFile] more powerful
>   (Plus the usual bugfixes, of course.)
>
>  What's involved in making a release if we ignore these things? Well, the
>  HEAD is (usually) buildable from checkout and mostly passes its test
>  suite so we're not actually that far. Given how much has changed since
>  8.6b1, I'd actually argue that the best thing we can do now is to make
>  another beta. Now.
>
>  Or at least a release candidate for a beta so that we can check to see
>  if we build in at least the critical configurations on key platforms.
>  I'd argue that none of the features above are likely to be worth waiting
>  a beta on, and the benefit for getting out of our current stasis far
>  exceeds the cost of not having all the above. (Only build bugs should be
>  fixed in the period from b2RC1 to b2, so I'd hope that we can make that
>  very short.)
>
>  Once 8.6b2 is out, we can sort the above features out (or explicitly
>  decide to postpone them) and refocus on getting to the finishing line.
>  The main point is that we've got to stop messing about. The community
>  deserves better from us.
>
>  Donal.

I don't know exactly for the other items, but please note that #348 is
close to being fully baked, only awaiting Don's review. Given this
status, it would be very disappointing to let that TIP miss a second
chance of contact with beta testers.

-Alex