[TCLCORE] Monday noon TCL/Tk meeting report

[Harald O. <har...@el...>]

Dear TCL/Tk/OpenACS/Naviserver team,

we had a great meeting today with: Don, Jan, Rolf, Paul, Brian, Massimo, 
Ashok, Andreas Kupries, Andreas Leitgreb, Mark, Steve, Harald.

The results are:

R1) TCL/Tk 9.0.0 release is great ! Thanks for all contributors !

R2) TCL/Tk 9.0.1 is the next step
   - release process starts in December 2024
   - developed in main branches
   - address double-distribution of 8.6 and 9.0 by Linux maintainers
   - TIP 701 (tilde API) included
   - TIP 700 (MD documentation) eventually started

R3) TCL 8.6 support
   - proposed support time: until end 2025
   - all major packages and distributions should be ported to 9.0
   - but some will only switch, if 8.6 declared as unsupported
   - specially Tk 9 offers so much practical value, that Tk8.6 is seen 
as obsolete (scaled interface, updated themes)
   - no new features for 8.6, sorry, only bug back-porting

R4) TCL 8.7 release
   - discussion point
   - most just want to focus on 9.0
   - 8.6 is easy for migration for 8.6 packages:
     - TCL_CHAR size with 16 bit interface is available
     - TCL_CHAR size with 32 bit interface (like 9.0) is also available
     - No surrogates (like 8.6.11+)
   - 8.7 is better than 8.6 as compatible 9.0 extensions are included 
(full Unicode)
   - major player like AndroWish are supposed to directly go to 9.0
   - if released, 8.6 should be taken out of maintenance to avoid 
double-burden
   - first possible release in 1 year. All bugfixes of 9.0 are 
back-ported, so 8.7. is getting better
   - Debian co-maintainer pointed out, that distributions do not have 
resources for multiple versions. So, only one version is best, max 2, not 3.

R5) TCL 9.1 release
   - will be started when 9.0 is stable (not now)
   - TIP 626 (long number of command arguments) is binary incompatible 
and will wait for 9.1
   - now we have long strings and lists, we should work on its performance.
   - decodings currently also have performance issues and are sometimes 
issued multiple times
   - drop support for ITCL

R6) Decoupling of TCL and Tk release
   - There is a strong support to decouple TCL and Tk (minor) releases
   - Don is ready to release Tk separately at any time
   - Major Tk people were missing in the call
   - Eventually own infra-structure: TIP, Team
   It would be great to build-up a Tk team and a working way.
   Any people for a task force?

R7) Documentation
   - The new documentation project is seen as important to get wider 
audience
   - Help is proposed to advance - Torsten must not do all the work

R8) Extensions
   - Porting all extensions to 9 is a main step to put energy in
   - Get tests for larger strings/lists
   - make valgrind cleaner for extensions
   - Massimo is the Debian maintainer for TDBC. He proposed (before) to 
be the tdbc packages maintainer. I would say: yes, just do it, great, 
applause!

It is proposed to repeat those meetings each two weeks on Mondays at 
12:00 UTC. The next meeting will take place 11th of November 2025.

Thank you all, you guys rock !
Harald