tcl-core — Tcl Core Team discussions about Tcl development

Re: [TCLCORE] Linux Weekly News and Tcl

[Brent W. <we...@aj...>]

www.tcltk.org is available and owned by Michael McLennan.
I believe he is waiting until the new Tcl Core Team stuff actually
materializes and has its own website.  While I appreciate the power
of that motivation, I would still love to see it as an alias for
dev.scriptics.com in the meantime.  As creator of the dev.scriptics.com
site I can assure you that we are all eager to see that replaced by
a community-run website.  Also, Ajuba is also ready to pony up the
machine and our ISP connection to host www.tcltk.org.  I'm not really
wedded to any particular Tcl-powered web site: TclHttpd, Velocigen,
AOLserver.  I already use two of those.

>>>Andreas Kupries said:
 > 
 > On http://www.lwn.net/2000/0727/devel.php3 I see a section about
 > 'Language Links'. One perl and three python links, but none for tcl :(
 > 
 > Which sites should we submit to them for inclusion ?
 > 
 > 
 > Oh, on a side note, if the domains
 > 	http://www.tcltk.org/,
 > 	http://www.tcl-tk.org/
 > 
 > etc. are not available anymore, think about
 > 
 > 	http://www.tcl-lang.org/
 > 
 > Ruby uses that format for its toplevel site.
 > 
 > -- 
 > Sincerely,
 > 	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
 > 		<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
 > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     ---
 > 
 > --
 > The TclCore mailing list is sponsored by Ajuba Solutions
 > To unsubscribe:  email tcl...@aj... with the 
 >                  word UNSUBSCRIBE as the subject.
 > 

--	Brent Welch	<we...@aj...>
	http://www.ajubasolutions.com
	Scriptics changes to Ajuba Solutions
	scriptics.com => ajubasolutions.com

[TCLCORE] Re: TclDomPro?

[Al B. <aw...@aj...>]

There's currently no immediate active development of TclDomPro here at
Ajuba.  Since our goal in making TDP open source was to accomplish
a merge with TclDom, and as the nominal maintainer of TDP here at
Ajuba, I'd say go ahead with your changes.

But let us know first about anything that changes the API.

- Al   

Joe English wrote:
> 
> What's the status of the TclDomPRO package?
> 
> I've fixed some bugs and added a feature to the copy that
> Steve Ball checked in (CVS module external/tcldom/src),
> but haven't applied these to the original copy
> (CVS module external/tcldompro/src).
> 
> I'm about to do some more serious hacking on tcldom/src
> to integrate it with the Zveno tcldom package,
> so I guess I ought to coordinate with whoever
> is maintaining the "Pro" version...
> 
> --Joe English
> 
>   jen...@fl...
> 
> (P.S. Re: Creative ChangeLog entries -- I'm one of the guilty
> parties -- sorry about that -- although I plead ignorance.
> As penance I will re-read the GNU coding standards document :-)

-- 

Albert Biggerstaff           Phone: (650) 210-0142
Ajuba Solutions              Email: aw...@aj...

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[TCLCORE] Re: friday's "Patch submittal for generic/tclExecute.c"

[<mi...@ut...>]

Sorry, stupid mistake: the patch file enclosed on friday's message won't
even compile! So, again, disregard my last message.

I am enclosing a corrected patch with this, only in case you might be
curious ...  This one does compile and pass the tests.

The performance difference being so small, I think it is quite
understndable if you chose to diregard the whole thing anyway. As I
said, I believe the main difference may be to the programmer who wants
to touch TclExecuteByteCode rather than in the program itself.

The next one will be either much much better, or else non-existent; I
fear I may be becoming a candidate for no-spam lists.

Greetings
Miguel

[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

> Also sprach Jeffrey Hobbs:
 
>> ...  Sure, Tcl is great as it is, but for a lot of people its only
>> great when they have itcl, blt, tix, patches for better C++
>> compatibility, more data structures, etc etc.  Fewer and fewer are
>> truly satisfied with what the "core" provides.

> This is just slightly off the point, but I don't understand this
> last couple of sentences.  It seems like you are implying that the
> fact that the core of Tcl, by itself, is an incomplete solution for
> most complicated tasks is a bad thing.  Is that right?
 
> I thought the aim was to get more stuff out of the core (making it
> thereby even LESS satisfactory by itself) and then making the
> process of acquiring & deploying extensions so easy that you would
> never hesitate to do so...  That is still our goal, right?

I can't speak for the others, but for me this is one of the goals to
pursue and quite high on the priority list.


> As for introducing backwards incompatibilities, I agree with Brent a
> bit that we should not break Tcl compatibility unless there is some
> really compelling need.  I don't see any evils of the Tcl language
> that we are likely to cure in a good way (as opposed to, for
> instance, introducing some other comment syntax that breaks the
> current Tcl mold), that would require backwards incompatilibilities
> at the syntax level.  But in any case, this should be approached
> with some caution.

As can be seen in the discussion on c.l.t about {}$ and {}[ by Paul
Duffin.  I certainly like the basic idea behind that but the chosen
syntax was something which felt like syntactic salt to me (in opposition
to the syntactic sugar Richard Suchenwirth is so fond of).

> It would, on the other hand, be nice to rearrange some of the
> commands to be a little more coherent.  It would be good to gather
> all the list commands together,

Part of that is already done through the 'listx' command.

> and maybe even make the open & socket commands return objects, so we
> can get rid of this horrible mess of fconfigure, fblocked, eof...
> But I don't think that any of the subsystems are so badly designed
> right now that we couldn't provide wrappers for the old syntax...
 
> As for C level changes, this should really be a community vote type
> thing.  We need to balance the desire to clean up & make more
> powerful the new internals that were introduced in 8.0 & friends,
> with the need to carry along most of the major extensions.  So
> before we start wholesale changes like this, we should have a
> discussion of the merits, and make sure we have easy transition
> paths for all the many bits of C code out there...
 

-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
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[TCLCORE] TclDomPro?

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

What's the status of the TclDomPRO package?

I've fixed some bugs and added a feature to the copy that
Steve Ball checked in (CVS module external/tcldom/src),
but haven't applied these to the original copy
(CVS module external/tcldompro/src).

I'm about to do some more serious hacking on tcldom/src
to integrate it with the Zveno tcldom package,
so I guess I ought to coordinate with whoever
is maintaining the "Pro" version...


--Joe English

  jen...@fl...

(P.S. Re: Creative ChangeLog entries -- I'm one of the guilty
parties -- sorry about that -- although I plead ignorance.
As penance I will re-read the GNU coding standards document :-)

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[TCLCORE] Creative Tcl ChangeLog entries.

[Mo D. <md...@cy...>]

I don't mean to complain, but I have noticed some
"creative" entries showing up in Tcl and Tk
Changelogs.

Most ChangeLogs entries follow this format:

        * unix/Makefile.in:
        * win/Makefile.in: makefile cleanup

But there also seem to be some "creative" ones:

        * win/{Makefile.in,configure.in,tkConfig.sh.in}: 
        Cleanup of defines in tkConfig.sh

This conflicts with the GNU coding standards.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards.html

Could we please stick to the GNU standards? It really
does make you life easier later one. For instance,
I might grep the ChangeLog for "win/Makefile.in",
that would not match win/{Makefile.in,...

thanks
Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Karl L. <ka...@Ne...>]

Brent Welch wrote:

> I'm probably and old man here, but I think we can revitalize Tcl without
> breaking backwards compatibility.  In fact, enough incompatibility could
> really hurt us.  We've finally got a stable C API through stubs - it seems
> a shame to make gratuitous changes to "clean things up".

I agree with this 100%.

> Now, I'm all for things like Feather and factoring the core so it can
> be smaller, but if someone doesn't want a "Tcl-lite" that just eliminates
> some features, then they should be able to use Tcl 9 without major pain.
> I'd probably also live with a binary-incompatibilty but source-compatibilty
> approach, which is probably necessary if we muck with the Tcl_Obj and
> Tcl_ObjType structures.

I think factoring the core is interesting and has some cool aspects, and if
someone does it and does a good job, let's embrace it.  I don't think it will
yield very many new Tcl design wins.

I think it would be a big deal to have a build system that cranks out binary
releases of a mega-Tcl with lots of extensions across many platforms.  There was
some discussion of this recently in the newsgroup.  Any thoughts or ideas?

Karl


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[TCLCORE] Patch submittal for generic/tclExecute.c

[<mi...@ut...>]

Enclosed please find a patch file you might consider. It is a diff file
to
generic/tclExecute.c of tcl8.4a1; if I should rather send the complete
file,
please let me know. Remark that the file header (with CVS reference,
etc)
was NOT modified as it should ...

It modifies the file tclExecute.c (mainly the function
TclExecuteByteCode)
in the following manner:

A - Replaces the manner of addressing the Tcl stack; the programs do not

       use an index into an array but a pointer to the top item in the
stack. Hence
       the "idiom"  stackPtr[stackTop] is replaced by *stackTopPtr.

        This saves indexing into an array at every stack access, and
requires one
        fewer register variable - no need to keep stackPtr handy. On the
other hand,
        it costs an addition every time the stack is cached or decached
- because
        the environment keeps an index into the stack, and not the
address of the top
        item. It gives a modest speed increase (maybe 10% in the
bytecode-intensive
        parts of tclbench)

       The modifications are mainly in the macros DECACHE_STACK_INFO,
        CACHE_STACK_INFO, PUSH_OBJECT(objPtr) and POP_OBJECT.
        Declarations in several functions where changed, as well as
isolated
        instances of direct access to the stack (mainly in
TclExecuteByteCode,
        I can't remember if somewhere else also ...)


B - It does a general variable cleanup in TclExecuteByteCode. All
auxiliary variables
       are now constrained to blocks enclosing the different bytecode
instructions, except
        for those which really need to have function scope.

        Eliminates the variables opnd, pcAdjustment, valuePtr,
value2Ptr, objPtr, bytes,
        length and i from the function declaration.

        This "elimination of global variables" has probably no effect on
performance; I think
         however it will be of value to maintainers as it simplifies the
analysis of instructions.


Your comments are of course welcome.  Cheers

Miguel Sofer

Re: [TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

--------; charset=us-ascii

> Also sprach Jeffrey Hobbs:
 
>> ...  Sure, Tcl is great as it is, but for a lot of people its only
>> great when they have itcl, blt, tix, patches for better C++
>> compatibility, more data structures, etc etc.  Fewer and fewer are
>> truly satisfied with what the "core" provides.

> This is just slightly off the point, but I don't understand this
> last couple of sentences.  It seems like you are implying that the
> fact that the core of Tcl, by itself, is an incomplete solution for
> most complicated tasks is a bad thing.  Is that right?
 
> I thought the aim was to get more stuff out of the core (making it
> thereby even LESS satisfactory by itself) and then making the
> process of acquiring & deploying extensions so easy that you would
> never hesitate to do so...  That is still our goal, right?

I can't speak for the others, but for me this is one of the goals to
pursue and quite high on the priority list.


> As for introducing backwards incompatibilities, I agree with Brent a
> bit that we should not break Tcl compatibility unless there is some
> really compelling need.  I don't see any evils of the Tcl language
> that we are likely to cure in a good way (as opposed to, for
> instance, introducing some other comment syntax that breaks the
> current Tcl mold), that would require backwards incompatilibilities
> at the syntax level.  But in any case, this should be approached
> with some caution.

As can be seen in the discussion on c.l.t about {}$ and {}[ by Paul
Duffin.  I certainly like the basic idea behind that but the chosen
syntax was something which felt like syntactic salt to me (in opposition
to the syntactic sugar Richard Suchenwirth is so fond of).

> It would, on the other hand, be nice to rearrange some of the
> commands to be a little more coherent.  It would be good to gather
> all the list commands together,

Part of that is already done through the 'listx' command.

> and maybe even make the open & socket commands return objects, so we
> can get rid of this horrible mess of fconfigure, fblocked, eof...
> But I don't think that any of the subsystems are so badly designed
> right now that we couldn't provide wrappers for the old syntax...
 
> As for C level changes, this should really be a community vote type
> thing.  We need to balance the desire to clean up & make more
> powerful the new internals that were introduced in 8.0 & friends,
> with the need to carry along most of the major extensions.  So
> before we start wholesale changes like this, we should have a
> discussion of the merits, and make sure we have easy transition
> paths for all the many bits of C code out there...
 

-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

I should have noted this before, but my initial post was just a
copy of the one I made on the newsgroup (in response to Laird,
subject: Content of the Perl6 talk), since many that are on the
CC list may not get the opportunity to read everything on the
newsgroup regularly.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (nee Scriptics)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Ousterhout [mailto:ou...@aj...]
> Subject: [TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read
> 
> 
> May I suggest that we should move most of these discussions to
> comp.lang.tcl?  If we want to eliminate the appearance of a group
> of Tcl "insiders", it would be better to make these discussions
> as public as possible.
> 
> -John-

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[John O. <ou...@aj...>]

May I suggest that we should move most of these discussions to
comp.lang.tcl?  If we want to eliminate the appearance of a group
of Tcl "insiders", it would be better to make these discussions
as public as possible.

-John-

At 11:09 AM 7/28/2000 -0700, Mo DeJong wrote:
>On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Jim Ingham wrote:
>
> > I thought the aim was to get more stuff out of the core (making it thereby
> > even LESS satisfactory by itself) and then making the process of acquiring &
> > deploying extensions so easy that you would never hesitate to do so...  That
> > is still our goal, right?
>
>I hope that is still the goal. We do need to do some work to make
>it easier to build and add new extensions, but I think we have the
>right goal.
>
> > As for introducing backwards incompatibilities, I agree with Brent a bit
> > that we should not break Tcl compatibility unless there is some really
> > compelling need.  I don't see any evils of the Tcl language that we are
> > likely to cure in a good way (as opposed to, for instance, introducing some
> > other comment syntax that breaks the current Tcl mold), that would require
> > backwards incompatilibilities at the syntax level.  But in any case, this
> > should be approached with some caution.
>
>I don't think we need any syntax changes. I do think that a "no commands
>must ever change" mentality will end up making things a lot harder
>in the long run. Honestly, if you need to run some 10 year old code,
>why can't you use an old version of Tcl? Why can't you do a bit of
>porting to get it working with Tcl 9.0?
>
> > It would, on the other hand, be nice to rearrange some of the commands to be
> > a little more coherent.  It would be good to gather all the list commands
> > together, and maybe even make the open & socket commands return objects, so
> > we can get rid of this horrible mess of fconfigure, fblocked, eof...  But I
> > don't think that any of the subsystems are so badly designed right now that
> > we couldn't provide wrappers for the old syntax...
>
>I would suggest that folks check out my EasySocket API, is it a
>lot easier to use than the plain socket interface.
>
>Mo DeJong
>Red Hat Inc 

________________________________________________________________________
John Ousterhout                            650-210-0102 tel
Chairman and Chief Technology Officer      650-230-4070 fax
Ajuba Solutions                            ou...@aj...
(Scriptics has changed its name...)        http://www.ajubasolutions.com

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Mo D. <md...@cy...>]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Jim Ingham wrote:

> I thought the aim was to get more stuff out of the core (making it thereby
> even LESS satisfactory by itself) and then making the process of acquiring &
> deploying extensions so easy that you would never hesitate to do so...  That
> is still our goal, right?

I hope that is still the goal. We do need to do some work to make
it easier to build and add new extensions, but I think we have the
right goal.

> As for introducing backwards incompatibilities, I agree with Brent a bit
> that we should not break Tcl compatibility unless there is some really
> compelling need.  I don't see any evils of the Tcl language that we are
> likely to cure in a good way (as opposed to, for instance, introducing some
> other comment syntax that breaks the current Tcl mold), that would require
> backwards incompatilibilities at the syntax level.  But in any case, this
> should be approached with some caution.

I don't think we need any syntax changes. I do think that a "no commands
must ever change" mentality will end up making things a lot harder
in the long run. Honestly, if you need to run some 10 year old code,
why can't you use an old version of Tcl? Why can't you do a bit of
porting to get it working with Tcl 9.0?

> It would, on the other hand, be nice to rearrange some of the commands to be
> a little more coherent.  It would be good to gather all the list commands
> together, and maybe even make the open & socket commands return objects, so
> we can get rid of this horrible mess of fconfigure, fblocked, eof...  But I
> don't think that any of the subsystems are so badly designed right now that
> we couldn't provide wrappers for the old syntax...

I would suggest that folks check out my EasySocket API, is it a
lot easier to use than the plain socket interface.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Jim I. <ji...@ap...>]

Also sprach Jeffrey Hobbs:

>                           ...  Sure, Tcl is great as it is, but for a lot
> of people its only great when they have itcl, blt, tix, patches for better
> C++ compatibility, more data structures, etc etc.  Fewer and fewer are
> truly satisfied with what the "core" provides.

This is just slightly off the point, but I don't understand this last couple
of sentences.  It seems like you are implying that the fact that the core of
Tcl, by itself, is an incomplete solution for most complicated tasks is a
bad thing.  Is that right?

I thought the aim was to get more stuff out of the core (making it thereby
even LESS satisfactory by itself) and then making the process of acquiring &
deploying extensions so easy that you would never hesitate to do so...  That
is still our goal, right?

As for introducing backwards incompatibilities, I agree with Brent a bit
that we should not break Tcl compatibility unless there is some really
compelling need.  I don't see any evils of the Tcl language that we are
likely to cure in a good way (as opposed to, for instance, introducing some
other comment syntax that breaks the current Tcl mold), that would require
backwards incompatilibilities at the syntax level.  But in any case, this
should be approached with some caution.

It would, on the other hand, be nice to rearrange some of the commands to be
a little more coherent.  It would be good to gather all the list commands
together, and maybe even make the open & socket commands return objects, so
we can get rid of this horrible mess of fconfigure, fblocked, eof...  But I
don't think that any of the subsystems are so badly designed right now that
we couldn't provide wrappers for the old syntax...

As for C level changes, this should really be a community vote type thing.
We need to balance the desire to clean up & make more powerful the new
internals that were introduced in 8.0 & friends, with the need to carry
along most of the major extensions.  So before we start wholesale changes
like this, we should have a discussion of the merits, and make sure we have
easy transition paths for all the many bits of C code out there...

Jim
-- 
Jim Ingham                                 ji...@ap...
Apple Computer

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

I should note that it's not just Perl6, but the next major rev of Python
that has clearly announced that it will sacrifice some aspect of backwards
compatability (although they aren't as far along in public planning yet).

Is it major pain when just a translation script is needed?  I think that
Tcl is already a better language in that we could likely provide a Tcl
level compatability mode that's like the translation on the fly.  Thus
the request for 'package require Tcl 8' in Tcl9 would shift around the
necessary bits to make it look like Tcl8.  The user wouldn't gain whatever
advantages Tcl9 has, but things would still work.  I think we could
achieve that with 99% compatability at the Tcl level.

Tcl at the C level would be trickier, as we'd want to reconsider some of
the designs of basic public structures (like Tcl_Obj, and finally getting
the Var structures public).  Sure, Tcl is great as it is, but for a lot
of people its only great when they have itcl, blt, tix, patches for better
C++ compatibility, more data structures, etc etc.  Fewer and fewer are
truly satisfied with what the "core" provides.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brent Welch [mailto:we...@aj...]
	...
> I'm probably and old man here, but I think we can revitalize Tcl without
> breaking backwards compatibility.  In fact, enough incompatibility could
> really hurt us.  We've finally got a stable C API through stubs - it seems
> a shame to make gratuitous changes to "clean things up".
>
> Now, I'm all for things like Feather and factoring the core so it can
> be smaller, but if someone doesn't want a "Tcl-lite" that just eliminates
> some features, then they should be able to use Tcl 9 without major pain.
> I'd probably also live with a binary-incompatibilty but source-compatibilty
> approach, which is probably necessary if we muck with the Tcl_Obj and
> Tcl_ObjType structures.

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[TCLCORE] Re: Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Brent W. <we...@aj...>]

I'm probably and old man here, but I think we can revitalize Tcl without
breaking backwards compatibility.  In fact, enough incompatibility could
really hurt us.  We've finally got a stable C API through stubs - it seems
a shame to make gratuitous changes to "clean things up".

Now, I'm all for things like Feather and factoring the core so it can
be smaller, but if someone doesn't want a "Tcl-lite" that just eliminates
some features, then they should be able to use Tcl 9 without major pain.
I'd probably also live with a binary-incompatibilty but source-compatibilty
approach, which is probably necessary if we muck with the Tcl_Obj and
Tcl_ObjType structures.

>>>"Jeffrey Hobbs" said:
 > A Ruby user's perspective on the announced plans:
 > 	http://deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=651665267
 > 
 > And a more Perl-oriented technical perspective:
 > 	http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/07/perl6.html
 > 
 > These are good notes about planning for a major revision upgrade, most
 > notably that Perl6 plans to break compatability with Perl5, maintaining
 > upwards compatability only via a translation script (that won't guarantee
 > 100% compatability).
 > 
 > Perhaps before we start to worry too much about the nearer term but not
 > ambitious 8.4, whoever becomes the future Tcl Core Team should focus on
 > Tcl9 and a plan to truly revitalize Tcl.
 > 
 > Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
 > ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)
 > 
 > --
 > The TclCore mailing list is sponsored by Ajuba Solutions
 > To unsubscribe:  email tcl...@aj... with the 
 >                  word UNSUBSCRIBE as the subject.
 > 

--	Brent Welch	<we...@aj...>
	http://www.ajubasolutions.com
	Scriptics changes to Ajuba Solutions
	scriptics.com => ajubasolutions.com


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[TCLCORE] Notes about Perl6 ideas - good to read

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

A Ruby user's perspective on the announced plans:
	http://deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=651665267

And a more Perl-oriented technical perspective:
	http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/07/perl6.html

These are good notes about planning for a major revision upgrade, most
notably that Perl6 plans to break compatability with Perl5, maintaining
upwards compatability only via a translation script (that won't guarantee
100% compatability).

Perhaps before we start to worry too much about the nearer term but not
ambitious 8.4, whoever becomes the future Tcl Core Team should focus on
Tcl9 and a plan to truly revitalize Tcl.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

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[TCLCORE] Checkin of cygwin/mingwin build on core-8-3-1-branch

[Mo D. <md...@cy...>]

I checked in the merge of all the mingw related build changes
from 8.4 to core-8-3-1-branch. I tested the build using the mingw
cross compiler under Linux. It should work, but it is possible
that something in the VC++ side of the house broke. Don't say
I did not warn you.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

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[TCLCORE] Re: 8.3.2 almost finished - expect an 8.3.3

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

> FYI,
 
> 8.3.2 has some more testing to be done, and then some backporting of
> items that went into the main branch (8.4).  It should be out by
> mid-August.
 
> In working with 8.3.2, we realized that there will be a need for and
> 8.3.3 to work on limitations inherent in the Windows OS and how we
> manage sockets with Tcl.  Currently we can only service 64
> simultaneous socket requests because that's what the Windows select
> can manage per thread.

What an OS :(. Now there was that slip of paper ... Ah, here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Windows 95: n.
	32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to
	an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit
	microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand
	for 1 bit of competition.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> The solution will be to spin a thread per socket instead (as
> lightweight as possible).

Questions coming to my mind:

	Would it be much more complex to spin new threads only as the
	limit on the previous ones is reached, i.e. only every 64
	sockets ?

	Or would that complexity outweigh the benefits we can get from
	having less threads around ?

	I'm worried that we will run into some limit on the number of
	threads supported by Win* instead.


> At the same time we have to solve the problem with the memory leak
> in using Windows threads when the C runtime is accessed (leading to
> things like the 4K mem leak per exec call on Windows).
 
> We already have some thoughts, but it will take some time to get the
> solution right.  We want to get the 8.3.2 changes out because it
> will be important for everybody to have a real distributed version
> of Tcl with the corrected stacked channel code, among other changes
> that will be in 8.3.2.  No release date for 8.3.3 at this time.

-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[TCLCORE] Re: Porting 8-3-1-branch IO changes to 8-4

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

> OK, so the major IO rewrite for 8.3.2 is mostly finished (the new
> interfaces need to be doc'ed).  Now we have to deal with moving
> those code changes up into the mainline (8.4).
 
> One of the conflicts is that generic declarations were added to both
> 8.3 (Tcl_Channel* funcs) and 8.4 (funcs for sharing channels among
> threads, some UniChar and HashTable funcs).  Since the 8.4 only saw
> one alpha, the 8.3 entries will have precedence and keep their
> numbers.  I'll renumber the 8.4 entries.  This means that extensions
> compiled against 8.4a1 stubs may have incompatabilities and should
> be recompiled with 8.4a2 if they use the new stub calls.

The only extension I currently know of using the new calls is
'Thread'.


> Of course, we managed to focus new development in both branches on
> the IO layer (8.4 getting work in the sharing of channels between
> threads).  Since 8.3 is by far the larger of the rewrites, I'd like
> to basically move the IO changes complete up from 8.3 and then
> regraft the 8.4 changes onto the new system.
 
> Anyone forsee further complications with this, or has comments, or
> would like to help?

I see no big complications with that. ... Ok, the changes I did are in

	2000-05-03-20-24.diff.gz 

of my cvs snapshots. There are some other changes in as well (joinable
threads), but it should be possible to trim it down to contain just
the changes to the IO-system. We'll have to see how many chunks are
still applicable. File attached.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt of ChangeLog of the lastest 8.3.2-io-rewrite.

* tests/all.tcl: corrected additional sets by Kupries for testing.

I'm chagrined. My apologies for that oversight.

I truly wish there was some way to set such things separately during
development without having to modify the distributed files
themselves. => Some idea for Jennifer Hom and her planned changes to
tcltest.


-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [TCLCORE] 8.3.2 almost finished - expect an 8.3.3

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

--------; charset=us-ascii
> FYI,
 
> 8.3.2 has some more testing to be done, and then some backporting of
> items that went into the main branch (8.4).  It should be out by
> mid-August.
 
> In working with 8.3.2, we realized that there will be a need for and
> 8.3.3 to work on limitations inherent in the Windows OS and how we
> manage sockets with Tcl.  Currently we can only service 64
> simultaneous socket requests because that's what the Windows select
> can manage per thread.

What an OS :(. Now there was that slip of paper ... Ah, here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Windows 95: n.
	32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to
	an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit
	microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand
	for 1 bit of competition.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> The solution will be to spin a thread per socket instead (as
> lightweight as possible).

Questions coming to my mind:

	Would it be much more complex to spin new threads only as the
	limit on the previous ones is reached, i.e. only every 64
	sockets ?

	Or would that complexity outweigh the benefits we can get from
	having less threads around ?

	I'm worried that we will run into some limit on the number of
	threads supported by Win* instead.


> At the same time we have to solve the problem with the memory leak
> in using Windows threads when the C runtime is accessed (leading to
> things like the 4K mem leak per exec call on Windows).
 
> We already have some thoughts, but it will take some time to get the
> solution right.  We want to get the 8.3.2 changes out because it
> will be important for everybody to have a real distributed version
> of Tcl with the corrected stacked channel code, among other changes
> that will be in 8.3.2.  No release date for 8.3.3 at this time.

-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [TCLCORE] Porting 8-3-1-branch IO changes to 8-4

[Andreas K. <a.k...@we...>]

> OK, so the major IO rewrite for 8.3.2 is mostly finished (the new
> interfaces need to be doc'ed).  Now we have to deal with moving
> those code changes up into the mainline (8.4).
 
> One of the conflicts is that generic declarations were added to both
> 8.3 (Tcl_Channel* funcs) and 8.4 (funcs for sharing channels among
> threads, some UniChar and HashTable funcs).  Since the 8.4 only saw
> one alpha, the 8.3 entries will have precedence and keep their
> numbers.  I'll renumber the 8.4 entries.  This means that extensions
> compiled against 8.4a1 stubs may have incompatabilities and should
> be recompiled with 8.4a2 if they use the new stub calls.

The only extension I currently know of using the new calls is
'Thread'.


> Of course, we managed to focus new development in both branches on
> the IO layer (8.4 getting work in the sharing of channels between
> threads).  Since 8.3 is by far the larger of the rewrites, I'd like
> to basically move the IO changes complete up from 8.3 and then
> regraft the 8.4 changes onto the new system.
 
> Anyone forsee further complications with this, or has comments, or
> would like to help?

I see no big complications with that. ... Ok, the changes I did are in

	2000-05-03-20-24.diff.gz 

of my cvs snapshots. There are some other changes in as well (joinable
threads), but it should be possible to trim it down to contain just
the changes to the IO-system. We'll have to see how many chunks are
still applicable. File attached.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt of ChangeLog of the lastest 8.3.2-io-rewrite.

* tests/all.tcl: corrected additional sets by Kupries for testing.

I'm chagrined. My apologies for that oversight.

I truly wish there was some way to set such things separately during
development without having to modify the distributed files
themselves. => Some idea for Jennifer Hom and her planned changes to
tcltest.


-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <a.k...@we...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TCLCORE] 8.3.2 almost finished - expect an 8.3.3

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

FYI,

8.3.2 has some more testing to be done, and then some backporting
of items that went into the main branch (8.4).  It should be out
by mid-August.

In working with 8.3.2, we realized that there will be a need for
and 8.3.3 to work on limitations inherent in the Windows OS and
how we manage sockets with Tcl.  Currently we can only service 64
simultaneous socket requests because that's what the Windows
select can manage per thread.  The solution will be to spin a
thread per socket instead (as lightweight as possible).  At the
same time we have to solve the problem with the memory leak in
using Windows threads when the C runtime is accessed (leading to
things like the 4K mem leak per exec call on Windows).

We already have some thoughts, but it will take some time to get
the solution right.  We want to get the 8.3.2 changes out because
it will be important for everybody to have a real distributed
version of Tcl with the corrected stacked channel code, among
other changes that will be in 8.3.2.  No release date for 8.3.3
at this time.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

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[TCLCORE] Porting 8-3-1-branch IO changes to 8-4

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

OK, so the major IO rewrite for 8.3.2 is mostly finished (the new interfaces
need to be doc'ed).  Now we have to deal with moving those code changes up
into the mainline (8.4).

One of the conflicts is that generic declarations were added to both 8.3
(Tcl_Channel* funcs) and 8.4 (funcs for sharing channels among threads,
some UniChar and HashTable funcs).  Since the 8.4 only saw one alpha, the
8.3 entries will have precedence and keep their numbers.  I'll renumber
the 8.4 entries.  This means that extensions compiled against 8.4a1 stubs
may have incompatabilities and should be recompiled with 8.4a2 if they
use the new stub calls.

Of course, we managed to focus new development in both branches on the
IO layer (8.4 getting work in the sharing of channels between threads).
Since 8.3 is by far the larger of the rewrites, I'd like to basically
move the IO changes complete up from 8.3 and then regraft the 8.4 changes
onto the new system.

Anyone forsee further complications with this, or has comments, or
would like to help?

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

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[TCLCORE] *-io-rewrite branches merged in

[Jeffrey H. <jef...@aj...>]

After finally coming to a point a very high (but not complete)
satisfaction with the Tcl IO channel / TLS rewrite, I have merged
the branches I was working on back in.  For Tcl, this means that
people shouldn't work with the core-8-3-1-io-rewrite branch anymore,
just core-8-3-1-branch or the mainline.  Note that the mainline
is Tcl 8.4, and I have not yet up-ported the IO rewrite code.

For Tls, this means use the mainline (cvs up -A, or checkout fresh),
please don't use tls-1-3-io-rewrite anymore.

Following these changes, Tcl is at 8.3.2 and TLS is at 1.4.

For those testing this, I also have numerous simple but severe
stress-testing scripts (note that there are also lots of tests
to go with the new code).  I'm going to figure out where to add
the stress testing scripts as examples into the CVS of Tls.

Jeffrey Hobbs                     Tcl Ambassador
ho...@Aj...          Ajuba Solutions (née Scriptics)

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[TCLCORE] Re: modifying generic/tclExecute.c

[Eric M. <er...@aj...>]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, <Miguel Sofer wrote:

> Point (a) implies inlining some code which is in other files
> (tclVar.c, tclBasic.c, maybe tclCompile.c). I have been "copying and
> pasting" in my preliminary tests, but realise that this is not very
> good - difficult maintenance, even if well documented. For instance,
> any change in the Var type may have severe implications in the
> executor, the decoupling is lost ...
> 
> A solution might be to put some of that code in macros in a common
> header file. I kind of liked the idea of touching a single file
> (actually, a single function!); this option would imply modifying also
> the other files ... and maybe making life difficult for their
> maintainers/updaters. I'd rather not ...

I'm generally opposed to using macros for anything but fairly small (less
than about 4 lines of code) functions.  I think overuse of macros can lead
to badly structured code.  Perhaps there are a few small, critical
sections of code that would benefit from this, however.  I'd like to see
what code you are specifically considering modifying this way.

This sort of leads into a related issue with TclExecuteByteCode, which is
that there is substantial duplication of functionality between
TclExecuteByteCode/Tcl_*CompCmd and the various Tcl_*ObjCmd
implementations.  I don't know of a good solution to this, but it would
surely make Tcl easier to maintain (not that it is really that bad right
now) if we could consolidate that code.

I'd like to get some other peoples brains working on this problem; maybe
we can come up with something reasonable for 9.0.

   Eric Melski                            The Other Tcl Guy
   ericm at ajubasolutions.com            Ajuba Solutions

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