[Tcllib-devel] Tcl 8.2 support

[Andreas K. <and...@ac...>]

In a recent patch I applied to the base64 package [1] I took out he supplied
'eq' and replaced it with 'string equal', to not break the promise of 8.2
compatibility the package has made. This prompted some discussion on the
tcler's chat and as a result of that discussion I am strongly considering
the following changes to our maintenance policies:

* New packages have to promise to support at least Tcl 8.4.

* Existing packages currently promising to support Tcl 8.2 are
  to be incrementally converted to 8.4 support.

  This conversion is likely done mostly on-demand, i.e. then
  patches for them arrive, however nothing speaks against a
  maintainer devoting some of their time to proactively convert
  packages as they have time.

  When converting a package to 8.4 the new version has to get a
  new minor version number. While the functionality has not changed
  doing this will allow users of the package to know exactly when
  8.4 support came into being and make a conscious choice whether
  to go to that version or not.

* Official testing of packages, i.e. for releases, is done only
  against Tcl 8.4 and 8.5 from now on.

  This change opens another venue for incremental improvement,
  that of the testsuites going from the old 8.0 format for
  test cases (name, description, ?constraints?, body) to the
  modern extensible option-based format (-body, -setup, -cleanup,
  ...).

Note that I have said nothing about converting 8.3+ packages. This version
of the core seems to be alive enough to keep that support around for a bit
longer.

Thoughts?

Some statistics.

	272	packages total
	  3	supporting 8.5+
	 73	supporting 8.4+
	 19	supporting 8.3+
	 97	supporting 8.2+
	  1	supporting 8.1+
	  4	supporting 8.0+
	  3	supporting 8+
	 72	undeclared what core is needed, assuming 8+.

[1]
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=112883&aid=1969078&group_i
d=12883

--
	Andreas Kupries <and...@Ac...>
	Developer @ http://www.ActiveState.com
	Tel: +1 778-786-1122