27 ms·

Tcl 9.0

406 points by bch 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cmacleod4 2y ago
The first major release in 27 years. 64-bit internal structures, so data can be huge. Full unicode with all the funky new emojis. Zip filesystems, etc., etc. There's lots of new stuff, and some old cruft has been dumped, so some programs may need a few updates, but there's still a high level of compatibility. The page above links to release notes with details of what's in and what's out.
- Zuider 2y ago
  Why did they remove tilde '~' as a convenient shortcut for the Home directory?
  - bch 2y ago
    Tcl Improvement Proposal (TIP) 602[0]. [0] https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/602.md https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/602.md
    - throw0101b 2y ago
      One example from the document: > Consider the naive attempt to clean out the /tmp directory. > cd /tmp > foreach f [glob *] {file delete -force $f} > A file ~ or ~user maliciously placed in /tmp will have rather unfortunate consequences.
      - amelius 2y ago
        Isn't that just tilde-expansion happening at the wrong moment?
      - em-bee 2y ago
        i once managed to create a directory named ~ using the mirror tool written in perl. then i naively tried to remove it using "rm -r ~" and started wondering why removing an empty directory would take so long, until it dawned on me... i learned a few new habits since then. i almost never use rm -r and i avoid "*" as a glob by itself. instead i always try to qualify "*" with a path, remove files first: "rm dir/*"; and then remove the empty directory. "rmdir dir/" if i do want to use rm -r, it is with a long path. eg in order remove stuff in the current directory i may distinctly add a path: rm -r ../currentdir/*" instead of "rm -r *" related, i also usually run "rm -i", but most importantly, i disable any alias that makes "rm -i" the default, because in order to override the -i you need to use -f, but "rm -i -f" i NOT the same thing as "rm". rm has three levels of safety: "rm -i; rm; rm -f". if "rm -i" is the default the "rm" level gets disabled, because "rm -i -f" is the same as "rm -f"
        kristopolous 2y ago
        I've long fantasized about a tool I call "expect" that safeguards against crazy stuff like that. It has a syntax of your expectations, functionally existing as a set of boundaries, and you can hook it to always run as a wrapper for some set of commands. It essentially stages the wrapped command and if none of the boundaries are violated it goes through. Otherwise it yells at you and you need to manually override it. For instance, pretend I'm ok with mv being able to clobber except in some special directory, let's call it .bitcoin or whatever. (chattr can also solve this, it's just an example). The tool can be implemented relying on things like bpf or preload Originally I wanted it as a SQL directive ... a way to safeguard a query against doing like `update table set field=value expect rows=1` where you meant to put in the where clause but instead blew away an entire column. I think this would be especially useful surfacing it in frameworks and ORMs some of which make these accidents a bit too easy.
        danielheath 2y ago
        For sql specifically, “limit 2” is my default way to write “expect 1”; if it affects two rows, I know that I have screwed up, whereas “limit 1” can be wrong without my noticing.
      - AlienRobot 2y ago
        I once created a file named *. Sweats were sweated that day.
        orthoxerox 2y ago
        I've heard that one of the Unix founding fathers had a directory with 125 files that all had single-byte names: one for each ASCII symbol except slash, dot and null. He would then test any new utility against this directory and chew the careless programmer out if it couldn't correctly handle every one of these names.
  - cmacleod4 2y ago
    In the long run, special cases like that often turn out to be more trouble than they are worth. If an ordinary file happened to start with '~' it would not be handled correctly. So you either accept or ignore that potential problem, or you have to write extra code to work around it. It's safer to not have such special cases at all.
    - mirekrusin 2y ago
      Should be starts with ~/
      - cmacleod4 2y ago
        No, ~abc will be interpreted as the home directory of user abc in Tcl 8.*
        eviks 2y ago
        Then you fix this mistake, not remove ~ completely
        Y_Y 2y ago
        It's not a mistake
        mirekrusin 2y ago
        If it's not a mistake then why they took it off?
        cmacleod4 2y ago
        The original design decision was to behave like a shell, where ~ means your own home dir and ~fred means fred's home dir. With the benefit of experience, this is now seen to be unwise and a different decision has been made.
  - Koshkin 2y ago
    Just recently I used '~' in the remote target path in the scp command, and, somewhat unexpectedly, it created the directory with that name and put the files there.
  - isr 2y ago
    In 99% of cases, yes - this is a pain in the backside. Long ago I adopted something from the plan9 way of doing things (when I was heavily using acme). Just symlink /h to /home. So ~user becomes /h/user, in places where ~ is not expanded for you.
- wduquette 2y ago
  The Zip filesystem stuff is wonderful change to see: it takes a number of techniques that were common in the community (if you had the right tools and knew how to use them) for building standalone applications, and makes them part of the basic toolkit in a standard way. It's a truly excellent change, and I'm glad to see it.
  - packetlost 2y ago
    Can you explain what zip filesystem is?
    - mdaniel 2y ago
      A handler for treating .zip (and .jar and .tar ...) files as if they were a volume mounted at /home/user/foo.zip - e.g. https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk-21-ga/src/java.base/share/classes/java/net/JarURLConnection.java#L48 https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk-21-ga/src/java.base/... It may be easier to reason about when thinking of the way $(mount -o loop) works with .iso files -- a file that is a container for other files that one can mount as if it were a filesystem I was expecting pathlib in Python <https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html> to have one since a lot of Python distributions ship the standard library in .zip files but evidently not. Python gonna Python in that way Firefox actually used to ship with that same "jar:" protocol handler, too, and I made good use of it for reading the javadoc html which was shipped inside zip files and was indescribably easier than trying to manage all the .html files in a Java 8 SDK distribution. They made heavy use of this because a lot of their internals were in .xpi formats (which is also a .zip file) but they recently dropped it because Firefox gonna Firefox^W double down on some random shit other than making a sane browser
      - boltzmann-brain 2y ago
        they should do the same but for git repositories too
      - formerly_proven 2y ago
        Python has something kinda like VFS support just as a very special case for importing stuff and reading associated data files, see Anchor ("mount point") and Traversable ("virtual Path") in https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.resources.abc.html https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.resources.abc... - the actual implementation is done in finders et al (https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.html#module-importlib.abc https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.html#module-i...)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Klonoar 2y ago
The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.
- metadat 2y ago
  Eggdrop IRC bots. Even 25 years since I first created one, Eggdrop is still the best and most reliable + flexible IRC bot platform, and comes with native support for Tcl.
- frankjr 2y ago
  Curious as well. The only time I've seen it used in the wild is Redis' test suite. https://github.com/redis/redis/tree/unstable/tests/integration https://github.com/redis/redis/tree/unstable/tests/integrati...
- aidenn0 2y ago
  Tk based GUIs work across pretty much all desktop platforms and are much less resource intensive than electron and friends.
  - criddell 2y ago
    Is Electron really considered a competitor to Tk based GUIs? In my (limited) experience, Tcl/Tk is great for basic stuff but I don't think you could do even a small part of what you can do with an html + css + javascript GUI.
    - aidenn0 2y ago
      1. Tk can do a lot more than you think 2. I have seen very basic GUIs in electron just for the cross-platform nature of it.
    - nmadden 2y ago
      It used to be the other way around. It’s been a while since I did much UI work, but the web always felt incredibly frustrating for layout compared to Tk. (I think CSS finally has something approaching Tk’s grid layout manager?) There are fewer frameworks for Tk, but I think it has most things you’d need. Maybe some of the finer control over fonts etc is lacking.
breck 2y ago
For those that are new to Tcl, there's an alternate universe where Tcl is the browser language instead of Javascript: "Interesting footnote: the founding of Netscape occurred at the same time I was deciding where to go in industry when I left Berkeley in 1994. Jim Clarke and Marc Andreessen approached me about the possibility of my joining Netscape as a founder, but I eventually decided against it (they hadn't yet decided to do Web stuff when I talked with them). This is one of the biggest "what if" moments of my career. If I had gone to Netscape, I think there's a good chance that Tcl would have become the browser language instead of JavaScript and the world would be a different place! However, in retrospect I'm not sure that Tcl would actually be a better language for the Web than JavaScript, so maybe the right thing happened." Source: https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html
- hathawsh 2y ago
  Perhaps. I think one of the main reasons JS caught on is that it had no significant baggage and the designers could take it in any direction it needed to go. Every language used by more than a few people, no matter how good it is, has some baggage. As a result, in that alternate universe, the browser scripting language landscape might have been a lot more fragmented.
  - breck 2y ago
    > it had no significant baggage and the designers could take it in any direction it needed to go This is a fantastic insight and put very well. Thank you. New platforms unlock rare opportunities for new languages that have no baggage and can focus on fully exploiting the new platform.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  I doubt the world would have stuck with TCL if that had happened. JavaScript was good enough for people to put up with. TCL definitely isn't. More likely we would have ended up with TCL + something else, with TCL deprecated.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  The work on the safe subset of Tcl for the web can be exploited today to run untrusted scripts in an easily managed sandbox. If you want you can strip away enough commands for the language to be non-Turing complete.
gorgoiler 2y ago
I know of Tcl but I don’t know anything about its structure. The number one thing I ask of a language is consistency: the minimal amount of magic and most of the language implemented in itself. Ruby almost got there and then, for me, slipped up on class << self. How does Tcl fare under these criteria?
- wduquette 2y ago
  The Tcl language is made up of commands; a command has a name and takes an argument list, with which it can do literally anything. The standard commands are written in C; Tcl `procs` are commands that are written in Tcl. The control structures, like `if` and `foreach` and `while` is just a Tcl command. The `proc` command that defines a proc is just a Tcl command. I think of it as Lisp for C programmers. So: is the language implemented mostly in itself? No, it's mostly implemented in C. Is there a minimal amount of magic? No; the amount of magic you can do is effectively unlimited.
  - bch 2y ago
    > Is there a minimal amount of magic? No; the amount of magic you can do is effectively unlimited. I might be mistaken, but I think the OP was asking if there is surprising magic (I.e. special cases/considerations) built into the language, in which case I’d say, “No, Tcl is not “magical”, but surprisingly simple and regular.” That said, indeed it’s powerful in its application of its primitives, but you do still need to mind some things (don’t pretend* you can quote better than the quoting engine, don’t pretend* you can do lists better than the list processor, …). Not magical though - very understandable. *rules are meant to be broken, blah, blah, but the “gotchas” are new practitioners falling into this, or advanced cases, falling into this…
    - wduquette 2y ago
      In that sense, yes, very little magic...enabling vast conjurations. :-)
  - robinsonb5 2y ago
    It's also absurdly easy to integrate into C or C++ projects, or to write an extension in C or C++ which can be loaded to implement new commands.
tpoacher 2y ago
I recently asked HN if Tcl is still relevant in 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41108667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41108667 Nice to see a new release coming out not too long after such a question :)
- fithisux 2y ago
  It is very still relevant. It is also supported on Scilab.
Karrot_Kream 2y ago
> New Notifiers: The central event handling engine in Tcl is now constructed on top of the system calls epoll or kqueue when they are available. The select based implementation also remains for platforms where they are not. This is huge! A big portion of why concurrency in Tcl was so dated and why the language was considered so non-performant was because it relied on `select` despite `epoll` and `kqueue` being available for at least a decade. Tcl is one of my favorite languages because of how easy it is to get started with and how easy metaprogramming is.
- kragen 2y ago
  mostly people consider tcl non-performant because fundamental operations are about twice as slow as cpython, which is no speed demon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41637953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41637953 another reason is that we don't know how to write fast tcl, as i inadvertently demonstrated in that thread
sedatk 2y ago
I can't overstate my love for Tcl, yet I had only a little chance to use it when writing XiRCON IRC scripts back in the late 90's. Such an elegant language: simple, easy to learn, flexible. I call it Lisp for humans. I wish it were more popular. So glad to see that it's still alive and kicking.
- mattw2121 2y ago
  Agreed, my only exposure to Tcl was writing IRC scripts for bots and I have nothing but fond memories of the experience.
  - sshine 2y ago
    Same. Such a simple life writing text-only event handlers.
- anthk 2y ago
  >I call it Lisp for humans. Except for upvar.
  - makmanalp 2y ago
    What's upvar? :-)
    - var_1983 2y ago
      Nothing much, what about you?
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    CMake similarly is sick in the head: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.30/command/set.html#normal https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.30/command/set.html#normal (heh, I enjoy that the documentation anchor is "normal" for SET(FOO BAR PARENT_SCOPE)
    - BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
doublerabbit 2y ago
I'm going to give a shout out to NaviServer [0], prior called AOLServer [1]. This web server has been battle-tested and is bullet proof. When something has been used power AOL back in the day, what can you say. OpenACS [2] is the main project of, which has existed since 1997 and that alone is highly powerful in what it can do with. Especially when coupled with TCL. It's still maintained and now supports TCL9 too! Javascript, TCL and NaviServer (and which has it's own modules such as DNS Server, LDAP, Mail really makes an powerful tool. If you're looking to get in to TCL and Web Development, you can really create fun with the two combined. I highly recommend that if you wish to dabble with something on the side for easy learning and plentiful features. Go take a look. [0] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/NaviServer https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/NaviServer https://github.com/naviserver-project/naviserver https://github.com/naviserver-project/naviserver [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35648805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35648805 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6164 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6164 [2] https://openacs.org/about/history https://openacs.org/about/history https://openacs.org/ https://openacs.org/
- sbuttgereit 2y ago
  Brings back great memories and (more or less) where I learned both Tcl & SQL... Back in the mid-90's this is the stack and software I was playing with, though admittedly I was using the ArsDigita Community System proper rather than OpenACS (and back when ArsDigita was a thing). Funny thing is I remember taking some free classes sponsored and taught by ArsDigita in an office they had in Pasadena, CA (or was it Glendale....???) they weren't too deep or long, but nice introductory stuff.
TMS80sNEjcte 2y ago
[flagged]
urbandw311er 2y ago
Wow Tcl is still a thing? Takes me back to university days — and even 20 years ago it was considered a bit of a poor man’s UX. I’m off to read the article and see if it’s any better these days…
bachmeier 2y ago
Really enjoy the language, even if I don't use it much these days. Does it still produce GUIs from 1995 on Linux? I'd still be using it today if it had halfway reasonable support for building GUIs on Linux, like they've had for ages on other platforms.
- oldlaptop 2y ago
  A theming engine went in something like 15 years ago now; the default theme looks rather dated, but there are plenty of others. See https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/List+of+ttk+Themes https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/List+of+ttk+Themes (though the screenshots of core themes are from 8.5/8.6 - default in particular has changed a bit in Tk 9). The "catch" is that the theming engine has its own new widgets, and so to be themed an application has to use the new API. Code from 1995 (or 2005) still produces GUIs from 1995.
  - bmacho 2y ago
    Those are TK? They look good!
  - bachmeier 2y ago
    Yeah, they added that a long time ago, but it's not at all the same as built-in support. My experience was trying out fragile third-party projects with little or no documentation. The whole point of using Tcl/Tk for writing a GUI was the convenience. Things may have changed over time. I no longer pay attention. Maybe I'll give it another try.
    - oldlaptop 2y ago
      The theming engine is absolutely "built-in", as are a handful of themes; in particular aqua and the winnative/xpnative/vistanative family (which integrate with the Mac/Windows windowing system such that the application will look "native" by default on those systems).
      - bachmeier 2y ago
urbandw311er 2y ago
It’s not exactly encouraging when a website for a UI tool contains absolutely no visual examples of UI on any of its main pages.
- cmacleod4 2y ago
  There is a redesign of the website in progress. In the meantime, take a look at https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Showcase https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Showcase .
- monetus 2y ago
  That tcl wiki is actually a fossil instance iirc - the VCS the Richard hipp evangelizes.
synergy20 2y ago
Tcl remains to be the king scripting language in chip design ecosystem
- padf 2y ago
  Also useful if you want to do microprocessor debugging. OpenOCD is scriptable/configurable using a small variant of TCL called JimTcl. https://openocd.org https://openocd.org https://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html https://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html
niobe 2y ago
Great to see all the love for TCL here :) Too bad it's not more popular really but even I struggle to find cases where I'd prefer it. Usually it come down to bash for simple stuff and python everything else.
- stroupwaffle 2y ago
  I’ve recently discovered Tcl and absolutely love it! It’s such a fun language. The starpacks/starkits for packaging apps together are really nice. For anyone interested there’s a fork of the Tcl Dev Kit at: https://github.com/bandoti/tdk https://github.com/bandoti/tdk This allows one to package applications with shared libraries and all bundled together.
- sedatk 2y ago
  Not those scenarios, but I think it still has potential to take place of embedded scripting languages like Lua, if it can keep up of course.
buescher 2y ago
Language snobs and 1990s OO snobs really love to hate on tcl - yeah everything is a string or a command, and the OO extensions were kind of kludgy - but there's a design ethos to the ecosystem that is really special. Ditch tkinter, which is basically writing python to write tcl, and try doing a GUI in straight tcl/tk. Try the sqlite interface. Write a modest C extension or wrap a library. So much of it just works.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > yeah everything is a string or a command And you're not kidding about everything being a command - this here is some "what the fuck is wrong with you people": https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment Including the truly stunning collection of: - one must terminate the command with ; before one can comment - one cannot have mismatched braces so don't try to comment out bogus code - one cannot have a backslash in a comment but hey it's a feature not a bug because this is how they launch wish: #!/bin/sh # the next line restarts using wish \ exec wish8.0 "$0" "$@" since the backslash is ignored by the shell but parsed by wish
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It made our startup possible, and the experience and learnings we got out of it, were in the genesis of OutSystems. One of those learnings, was that I never wanted to again use a dynamic language without any kind of JIT compiler for full blown web servers. The language is great, rewriting Tcl libraries into C on regular basis due to performance issues not so much.
  - rahen 2y ago
    What do you use now? Node.js? Groovy?
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Mostly Java, C#, Typescript and C++ when native libraries are called for.
  - 2y ago
criddell 2y ago
Why are they still on SourceForge? To me, SourceForge feels like one of those scammy download sites that installs spyware.
- an1sotropy 2y ago
  Sourceforge still works, and is (now) reliable. The awful DevShare malware stuff that Sourceforge started (under new ownership) in 2012 was stopped (under different new ownership) in 2016.
  - criddell 2y ago
    The site is ugly and difficult to navigate. Go there and enter TCL in the search box and see how many clicks you have to do to actually find the project. Then when you click the download button a timer has to run out before the download will start. Maybe it technically works, but it's a terrible UX.
    - arp242 2y ago
      "Ugly and difficult to navigate" and "terrible UX" are a completely different thing than "scammy download sites that installs spyware".
      - criddell 2y ago
        Why did you omit the "feels like one of those" from the text you quote?
- sigzero 2y ago
  They mirror to Github. https://github.com/tcltk/tcl https://github.com/tcltk/tcl
CarpaDorada 2y ago
It would be nice if the releases were cryptographically signed. I've never used Tcl/Tk before but I just downloaded the 9.0 release and I'll give it a go.
replwoacause 2y ago
Are there any good tcl web frameworks ?
- mdaniel 2y ago
  ~~A very famous(? infamous?) one: https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver#readme~~ https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver#readme~~ sorry, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663259 does a much better job answering than my link
  - replwoacause 2y ago
    Awesome! Can’t wait to play with this some more tomorrow. TCL looks like a fun language for my hobby projects.
- v9v 2y ago
  Rivet (https://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ https://tcl.apache.org/rivet/) may also be of interest.
  - replwoacause 2y ago
    Indeed thank you
conoro 2y ago
Love reading this. I spent a few years in the late 90s using Tcl/Tk to build cross-platform installers for Embedded tools/libraries, along with Expect for a bunch of our testing. One of those pragmatic toolsets for getting sh*t done.
kras143 2y ago
In the realm of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), TCL is ubiquitous. Virtually every EDA tool offers a TCL interface or API, making it the predominant language for tool configuration. I've always wondered why TCL hasn't gained traction in other domains. It possesses the elegance of Lisp while maintaining practicality.
pipeline_peak 2y ago
Anyone know if any new projects are using Tcl? Surprised they went with this
- cmacleod4 2y ago
  Some people like Tcl and use it, some people don't. The Tcl Wiki sees a regular stream of updates - https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/recent https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/recent . Personally I'm working on a Usenet/Web gateway which does web serving, NNTP, caching in Redis, user db in sqlite, all implemented in Tcl - https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng .
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    Courtesy of kicking the tires on your app, I discovered: https://github.com/apnadkarni/tcl9-migrate#migration-tool-for-tcl-9 https://github.com/apnadkarni/tcl9-migrate#migration-tool-fo... (via https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67166 https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67166 ) and "EuroTcl 2024 - presentation videos and slides now online" https://openacs.org/conf2024/info/schedule https://openacs.org/conf2024/info/schedule (via https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67134 https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67134 )
dontdieych 2y ago
Nice. `gitk` could be better.
teleforce 2y ago
Fun facts, the author of Tcl and tk is Prof. John Ousterhout, and his Software Design book is in its 2nd edition: A Philosophy of Software Design: https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/book.php https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/book.php
- WillAdams 2y ago
  This is an _amazing_ book, and one which I am currently working through --- I was reading one chapter, thinking as deeply as I could on it, then re-writing my current project using the lessons from it. Currently on Chapter 11 (Design it Twice), so will probably just finish, then work on a top--bottom re-write (switching from a current model which has a minimal Python core for variables only, and the balance is in OpenSCAD to a new implementation where everything possible is in Python, allowing usage from there via OpenPythonSCAD: https://pythonscad.org/ https://pythonscad.org/ )
tessierashpool9 2y ago
is tcl relevant beyond maintenance of existing legacy projects?
sigzero 2y ago
Outstanding! I know a lot of work has gone into this release. Kudos to the TCT.
butz 2y ago
Tcl/tk Wayland support when?
replwoacause 2y ago
I’m looking forward to installing this and having a play. Looks great
replwoacause 2y ago
So I started playing with TCL for the first time this weekend after seeing this post, and here are my thoughts. I think the language is fun and much different than I’m used to, but my biggest challenge so far is just getting packages installed. There seems to be no current, modern, maintained package manager or central repository, and to do basic stuff like stand up a web server requires compiling from C source. Kinda brutal. TclHttpd failed to compile with TCL 8.6 installed because I guess there was some change in APIs. I didn’t bother spending time figuring out how to patch the C code to make it work because that’s getting in for more than I bargained for. It’s too bad there’s not a simple way to get up and running with packages because for me so far that had been the biggest barrier to entry / deterrent. Also, I wanted to create a ES256 JWT but there’s no good way to do that apparently, due to the dated ecosystem, whereas in other languages this sort of this is just a package install away. I found a third-party solution in the form of Chilkat software but it costs $300 to license. So overall while I think TCL is fun, I can see why people don’t choose it when they want to be productive fast and not have to fuss around with deeply manual things that are commonplace and quick in other languages.
- cmacleod4 2y ago
  Take a look at http://www.ch-werner.de/LUCK.html http://www.ch-werner.de/LUCK.html . This site builds custom single-file Tcl executables for various architectures. It has a large selection of packages and you can choose which ones get included in the build. E.g if you select tclhttpd to be included in the build and name the output file tcluck, you can then start the web server by running: ./tcluck tcluck/tclhttpd3.5/bin/httpd.tcl This is still using Tcl8.6 though, it will take time for all these packages to be updated to work with Tcl9.0. I am actually running tclhttpd with Tcl9.0 myself, after making a handful of tweaks for compatibility.
- cmacleod4 2y ago
  I'm not familiar with JWT at all, but I found a description of how to generate an ES256 JWT from the command line: https://techdocs.akamai.com/iot-token-access-control/docs/generate-jwt-ecdsa-keys https://techdocs.akamai.com/iot-token-access-control/docs/ge... . I don't know if this would meet your needs, but from Tcl you could use `exec` to run these commands and read the result.
fithisux 2y ago
More important than Python 3.13. Bravo !!!! Can't wait Scilab and Python to ship with Tcl/Tk 9.0 I think Next Scripting latest releases are 9.0 ready. Keep an eye on Undroidwish and the Binary Releases section of the official page.

406 points by bch 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

The first major release in 27 years. 64-bit internal structures, so data can be huge. Full unicode with all the funky new emojis. Zip filesystems, etc., etc. There's lots of new stuff, and some old cruft has been dumped, so some programs may need a few updates, but there's still a high level of compatibility. The page above links to release notes with details of what's in and what's out.

Zuider 2y ago
Why did they remove tilde '~' as a convenient shortcut for the Home directory?
- bch 2y ago
  Tcl Improvement Proposal (TIP) 602[0]. [0] https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/602.md https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/602.md
  - throw0101b 2y ago
    One example from the document: > Consider the naive attempt to clean out the /tmp directory. > cd /tmp > foreach f [glob *] {file delete -force $f} > A file ~ or ~user maliciously placed in /tmp will have rather unfortunate consequences.
    - amelius 2y ago
      Isn't that just tilde-expansion happening at the wrong moment?
    - em-bee 2y ago
      i once managed to create a directory named ~ using the mirror tool written in perl. then i naively tried to remove it using "rm -r ~" and started wondering why removing an empty directory would take so long, until it dawned on me... i learned a few new habits since then. i almost never use rm -r and i avoid "*" as a glob by itself. instead i always try to qualify "*" with a path, remove files first: "rm dir/*"; and then remove the empty directory. "rmdir dir/" if i do want to use rm -r, it is with a long path. eg in order remove stuff in the current directory i may distinctly add a path: rm -r ../currentdir/*" instead of "rm -r *" related, i also usually run "rm -i", but most importantly, i disable any alias that makes "rm -i" the default, because in order to override the -i you need to use -f, but "rm -i -f" i NOT the same thing as "rm". rm has three levels of safety: "rm -i; rm; rm -f". if "rm -i" is the default the "rm" level gets disabled, because "rm -i -f" is the same as "rm -f"
      - kristopolous 2y ago
        I've long fantasized about a tool I call "expect" that safeguards against crazy stuff like that. It has a syntax of your expectations, functionally existing as a set of boundaries, and you can hook it to always run as a wrapper for some set of commands. It essentially stages the wrapped command and if none of the boundaries are violated it goes through. Otherwise it yells at you and you need to manually override it. For instance, pretend I'm ok with mv being able to clobber except in some special directory, let's call it .bitcoin or whatever. (chattr can also solve this, it's just an example). The tool can be implemented relying on things like bpf or preload Originally I wanted it as a SQL directive ... a way to safeguard a query against doing like `update table set field=value expect rows=1` where you meant to put in the where clause but instead blew away an entire column. I think this would be especially useful surfacing it in frameworks and ORMs some of which make these accidents a bit too easy.
        danielheath 2y ago
        For sql specifically, “limit 2” is my default way to write “expect 1”; if it affects two rows, I know that I have screwed up, whereas “limit 1” can be wrong without my noticing.
    - AlienRobot 2y ago
      I once created a file named *. Sweats were sweated that day.
      - orthoxerox 2y ago
        I've heard that one of the Unix founding fathers had a directory with 125 files that all had single-byte names: one for each ASCII symbol except slash, dot and null. He would then test any new utility against this directory and chew the careless programmer out if it couldn't correctly handle every one of these names.
- cmacleod4 2y ago
  In the long run, special cases like that often turn out to be more trouble than they are worth. If an ordinary file happened to start with '~' it would not be handled correctly. So you either accept or ignore that potential problem, or you have to write extra code to work around it. It's safer to not have such special cases at all.
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    Should be starts with ~/
    - cmacleod4 2y ago
      No, ~abc will be interpreted as the home directory of user abc in Tcl 8.*
      - eviks 2y ago
        Then you fix this mistake, not remove ~ completely
        Y_Y 2y ago
        It's not a mistake
        mirekrusin 2y ago
        If it's not a mistake then why they took it off?
        cmacleod4 2y ago
        The original design decision was to behave like a shell, where ~ means your own home dir and ~fred means fred's home dir. With the benefit of experience, this is now seen to be unwise and a different decision has been made.
- Koshkin 2y ago
  Just recently I used '~' in the remote target path in the scp command, and, somewhat unexpectedly, it created the directory with that name and put the files there.
- isr 2y ago
  In 99% of cases, yes - this is a pain in the backside. Long ago I adopted something from the plan9 way of doing things (when I was heavily using acme). Just symlink /h to /home. So ~user becomes /h/user, in places where ~ is not expanded for you.
wduquette 2y ago
The Zip filesystem stuff is wonderful change to see: it takes a number of techniques that were common in the community (if you had the right tools and knew how to use them) for building standalone applications, and makes them part of the basic toolkit in a standard way. It's a truly excellent change, and I'm glad to see it.
- packetlost 2y ago
  Can you explain what zip filesystem is?
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    A handler for treating .zip (and .jar and .tar ...) files as if they were a volume mounted at /home/user/foo.zip - e.g. https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk-21-ga/src/java.base/share/classes/java/net/JarURLConnection.java#L48 https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk-21-ga/src/java.base/... It may be easier to reason about when thinking of the way $(mount -o loop) works with .iso files -- a file that is a container for other files that one can mount as if it were a filesystem I was expecting pathlib in Python <https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html> to have one since a lot of Python distributions ship the standard library in .zip files but evidently not. Python gonna Python in that way Firefox actually used to ship with that same "jar:" protocol handler, too, and I made good use of it for reading the javadoc html which was shipped inside zip files and was indescribably easier than trying to manage all the .html files in a Java 8 SDK distribution. They made heavy use of this because a lot of their internals were in .xpi formats (which is also a .zip file) but they recently dropped it because Firefox gonna Firefox^W double down on some random shit other than making a sane browser
    - boltzmann-brain 2y ago
      they should do the same but for git repositories too
    - formerly_proven 2y ago
      Python has something kinda like VFS support just as a very special case for importing stuff and reading associated data files, see Anchor ("mount point") and Traversable ("virtual Path") in https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.resources.abc.html https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.resources.abc... - the actual implementation is done in finders et al (https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.html#module-importlib.abc https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/importlib.html#module-i...)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Klonoar 2y ago

The only time I’ve dealt with Tcl in recent memory was for some MacPorts portfile stuff. Anybody using it for something else and can speak to why you’d use it today? Genuinely curious; I don’t hate the language but can never bring myself to enjoy it either.

metadat 2y ago
Eggdrop IRC bots. Even 25 years since I first created one, Eggdrop is still the best and most reliable + flexible IRC bot platform, and comes with native support for Tcl.
frankjr 2y ago
Curious as well. The only time I've seen it used in the wild is Redis' test suite. https://github.com/redis/redis/tree/unstable/tests/integration https://github.com/redis/redis/tree/unstable/tests/integrati...
aidenn0 2y ago
Tk based GUIs work across pretty much all desktop platforms and are much less resource intensive than electron and friends.
- criddell 2y ago
  Is Electron really considered a competitor to Tk based GUIs? In my (limited) experience, Tcl/Tk is great for basic stuff but I don't think you could do even a small part of what you can do with an html + css + javascript GUI.
  - aidenn0 2y ago
    1. Tk can do a lot more than you think 2. I have seen very basic GUIs in electron just for the cross-platform nature of it.
  - nmadden 2y ago
    It used to be the other way around. It’s been a while since I did much UI work, but the web always felt incredibly frustrating for layout compared to Tk. (I think CSS finally has something approaching Tk’s grid layout manager?) There are fewer frameworks for Tk, but I think it has most things you’d need. Maybe some of the finer control over fonts etc is lacking.

breck 2y ago

For those that are new to Tcl, there's an alternate universe where Tcl is the browser language instead of Javascript: "Interesting footnote: the founding of Netscape occurred at the same time I was deciding where to go in industry when I left Berkeley in 1994. Jim Clarke and Marc Andreessen approached me about the possibility of my joining Netscape as a founder, but I eventually decided against it (they hadn't yet decided to do Web stuff when I talked with them). This is one of the biggest "what if" moments of my career. If I had gone to Netscape, I think there's a good chance that Tcl would have become the browser language instead of JavaScript and the world would be a different place! However, in retrospect I'm not sure that Tcl would actually be a better language for the Web than JavaScript, so maybe the right thing happened." Source: https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html https://pldb.io/blog/JohnOusterhout.html

hathawsh 2y ago
Perhaps. I think one of the main reasons JS caught on is that it had no significant baggage and the designers could take it in any direction it needed to go. Every language used by more than a few people, no matter how good it is, has some baggage. As a result, in that alternate universe, the browser scripting language landscape might have been a lot more fragmented.
- breck 2y ago
  > it had no significant baggage and the designers could take it in any direction it needed to go This is a fantastic insight and put very well. Thank you. New platforms unlock rare opportunities for new languages that have no baggage and can focus on fully exploiting the new platform.
IshKebab 2y ago
I doubt the world would have stuck with TCL if that had happened. JavaScript was good enough for people to put up with. TCL definitely isn't. More likely we would have ended up with TCL + something else, with TCL deprecated.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
The work on the safe subset of Tcl for the web can be exploited today to run untrusted scripts in an easily managed sandbox. If you want you can strip away enough commands for the language to be non-Turing complete.

gorgoiler 2y ago

I know of Tcl but I don’t know anything about its structure. The number one thing I ask of a language is consistency: the minimal amount of magic and most of the language implemented in itself. Ruby almost got there and then, for me, slipped up on class << self. How does Tcl fare under these criteria?

wduquette 2y ago
The Tcl language is made up of commands; a command has a name and takes an argument list, with which it can do literally anything. The standard commands are written in C; Tcl `procs` are commands that are written in Tcl. The control structures, like `if` and `foreach` and `while` is just a Tcl command. The `proc` command that defines a proc is just a Tcl command. I think of it as Lisp for C programmers. So: is the language implemented mostly in itself? No, it's mostly implemented in C. Is there a minimal amount of magic? No; the amount of magic you can do is effectively unlimited.
- bch 2y ago
  > Is there a minimal amount of magic? No; the amount of magic you can do is effectively unlimited. I might be mistaken, but I think the OP was asking if there is surprising magic (I.e. special cases/considerations) built into the language, in which case I’d say, “No, Tcl is not “magical”, but surprisingly simple and regular.” That said, indeed it’s powerful in its application of its primitives, but you do still need to mind some things (don’t pretend* you can quote better than the quoting engine, don’t pretend* you can do lists better than the list processor, …). Not magical though - very understandable. *rules are meant to be broken, blah, blah, but the “gotchas” are new practitioners falling into this, or advanced cases, falling into this…
  - wduquette 2y ago
    In that sense, yes, very little magic...enabling vast conjurations. :-)
- robinsonb5 2y ago
  It's also absurdly easy to integrate into C or C++ projects, or to write an extension in C or C++ which can be loaded to implement new commands.

tpoacher 2y ago

I recently asked HN if Tcl is still relevant in 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41108667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41108667 Nice to see a new release coming out not too long after such a question :)

fithisux 2y ago
It is very still relevant. It is also supported on Scilab.

Karrot_Kream 2y ago

> New Notifiers: The central event handling engine in Tcl is now constructed on top of the system calls epoll or kqueue when they are available. The select based implementation also remains for platforms where they are not. This is huge! A big portion of why concurrency in Tcl was so dated and why the language was considered so non-performant was because it relied on `select` despite `epoll` and `kqueue` being available for at least a decade. Tcl is one of my favorite languages because of how easy it is to get started with and how easy metaprogramming is.

kragen 2y ago
mostly people consider tcl non-performant because fundamental operations are about twice as slow as cpython, which is no speed demon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41637953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41637953 another reason is that we don't know how to write fast tcl, as i inadvertently demonstrated in that thread

sedatk 2y ago

I can't overstate my love for Tcl, yet I had only a little chance to use it when writing XiRCON IRC scripts back in the late 90's. Such an elegant language: simple, easy to learn, flexible. I call it Lisp for humans. I wish it were more popular. So glad to see that it's still alive and kicking.

mattw2121 2y ago
Agreed, my only exposure to Tcl was writing IRC scripts for bots and I have nothing but fond memories of the experience.
- sshine 2y ago
  Same. Such a simple life writing text-only event handlers.
anthk 2y ago
>I call it Lisp for humans. Except for upvar.
- makmanalp 2y ago
  What's upvar? :-)
  - var_1983 2y ago
    Nothing much, what about you?
- mdaniel 2y ago
  CMake similarly is sick in the head: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.30/command/set.html#normal https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.30/command/set.html#normal (heh, I enjoy that the documentation anchor is "normal" for SET(FOO BAR PARENT_SCOPE)
  - BoingBoomTschak 2y ago

doublerabbit 2y ago

I'm going to give a shout out to NaviServer [0], prior called AOLServer [1]. This web server has been battle-tested and is bullet proof. When something has been used power AOL back in the day, what can you say. OpenACS [2] is the main project of, which has existed since 1997 and that alone is highly powerful in what it can do with. Especially when coupled with TCL. It's still maintained and now supports TCL9 too! Javascript, TCL and NaviServer (and which has it's own modules such as DNS Server, LDAP, Mail really makes an powerful tool. If you're looking to get in to TCL and Web Development, you can really create fun with the two combined. I highly recommend that if you wish to dabble with something on the side for easy learning and plentiful features. Go take a look. [0] https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/NaviServer https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/NaviServer https://github.com/naviserver-project/naviserver https://github.com/naviserver-project/naviserver [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35648805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35648805 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6164 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6164 [2] https://openacs.org/about/history https://openacs.org/about/history https://openacs.org/ https://openacs.org/

sbuttgereit 2y ago
Brings back great memories and (more or less) where I learned both Tcl & SQL... Back in the mid-90's this is the stack and software I was playing with, though admittedly I was using the ArsDigita Community System proper rather than OpenACS (and back when ArsDigita was a thing). Funny thing is I remember taking some free classes sponsored and taught by ArsDigita in an office they had in Pasadena, CA (or was it Glendale....???) they weren't too deep or long, but nice introductory stuff.

TMS80sNEjcte 2y ago

[flagged]

urbandw311er 2y ago

Wow Tcl is still a thing? Takes me back to university days — and even 20 years ago it was considered a bit of a poor man’s UX. I’m off to read the article and see if it’s any better these days…

bachmeier 2y ago

Really enjoy the language, even if I don't use it much these days. Does it still produce GUIs from 1995 on Linux? I'd still be using it today if it had halfway reasonable support for building GUIs on Linux, like they've had for ages on other platforms.

oldlaptop 2y ago
A theming engine went in something like 15 years ago now; the default theme looks rather dated, but there are plenty of others. See https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/List+of+ttk+Themes https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/List+of+ttk+Themes (though the screenshots of core themes are from 8.5/8.6 - default in particular has changed a bit in Tk 9). The "catch" is that the theming engine has its own new widgets, and so to be themed an application has to use the new API. Code from 1995 (or 2005) still produces GUIs from 1995.
- bmacho 2y ago
  Those are TK? They look good!
- bachmeier 2y ago
  Yeah, they added that a long time ago, but it's not at all the same as built-in support. My experience was trying out fragile third-party projects with little or no documentation. The whole point of using Tcl/Tk for writing a GUI was the convenience. Things may have changed over time. I no longer pay attention. Maybe I'll give it another try.
  - oldlaptop 2y ago
    The theming engine is absolutely "built-in", as are a handful of themes; in particular aqua and the winnative/xpnative/vistanative family (which integrate with the Mac/Windows windowing system such that the application will look "native" by default on those systems).
    - bachmeier 2y ago

urbandw311er 2y ago

It’s not exactly encouraging when a website for a UI tool contains absolutely no visual examples of UI on any of its main pages.

cmacleod4 2y ago
There is a redesign of the website in progress. In the meantime, take a look at https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Showcase https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Showcase .
monetus 2y ago
That tcl wiki is actually a fossil instance iirc - the VCS the Richard hipp evangelizes.

synergy20 2y ago

Tcl remains to be the king scripting language in chip design ecosystem

padf 2y ago
Also useful if you want to do microprocessor debugging. OpenOCD is scriptable/configurable using a small variant of TCL called JimTcl. https://openocd.org https://openocd.org https://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html https://jim.tcl.tk/index.html/doc/www/www/index.html

niobe 2y ago

Great to see all the love for TCL here :) Too bad it's not more popular really but even I struggle to find cases where I'd prefer it. Usually it come down to bash for simple stuff and python everything else.

stroupwaffle 2y ago
I’ve recently discovered Tcl and absolutely love it! It’s such a fun language. The starpacks/starkits for packaging apps together are really nice. For anyone interested there’s a fork of the Tcl Dev Kit at: https://github.com/bandoti/tdk https://github.com/bandoti/tdk This allows one to package applications with shared libraries and all bundled together.
sedatk 2y ago
Not those scenarios, but I think it still has potential to take place of embedded scripting languages like Lua, if it can keep up of course.

buescher 2y ago

Language snobs and 1990s OO snobs really love to hate on tcl - yeah everything is a string or a command, and the OO extensions were kind of kludgy - but there's a design ethos to the ecosystem that is really special. Ditch tkinter, which is basically writing python to write tcl, and try doing a GUI in straight tcl/tk. Try the sqlite interface. Write a modest C extension or wrap a library. So much of it just works.

mdaniel 2y ago
> yeah everything is a string or a command And you're not kidding about everything being a command - this here is some "what the fuck is wrong with you people": https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment Including the truly stunning collection of: - one must terminate the command with ; before one can comment - one cannot have mismatched braces so don't try to comment out bogus code - one cannot have a backslash in a comment but hey it's a feature not a bug because this is how they launch wish: #!/bin/sh # the next line restarts using wish \ exec wish8.0 "$0" "$@" since the backslash is ignored by the shell but parsed by wish
pjmlp 2y ago
It made our startup possible, and the experience and learnings we got out of it, were in the genesis of OutSystems. One of those learnings, was that I never wanted to again use a dynamic language without any kind of JIT compiler for full blown web servers. The language is great, rewriting Tcl libraries into C on regular basis due to performance issues not so much.
- rahen 2y ago
  What do you use now? Node.js? Groovy?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Mostly Java, C#, Typescript and C++ when native libraries are called for.
- 2y ago

criddell 2y ago

Why are they still on SourceForge? To me, SourceForge feels like one of those scammy download sites that installs spyware.

an1sotropy 2y ago
Sourceforge still works, and is (now) reliable. The awful DevShare malware stuff that Sourceforge started (under new ownership) in 2012 was stopped (under different new ownership) in 2016.
- criddell 2y ago
  The site is ugly and difficult to navigate. Go there and enter TCL in the search box and see how many clicks you have to do to actually find the project. Then when you click the download button a timer has to run out before the download will start. Maybe it technically works, but it's a terrible UX.
  - arp242 2y ago
    "Ugly and difficult to navigate" and "terrible UX" are a completely different thing than "scammy download sites that installs spyware".
    - criddell 2y ago
      Why did you omit the "feels like one of those" from the text you quote?
sigzero 2y ago
They mirror to Github. https://github.com/tcltk/tcl https://github.com/tcltk/tcl

CarpaDorada 2y ago

It would be nice if the releases were cryptographically signed. I've never used Tcl/Tk before but I just downloaded the 9.0 release and I'll give it a go.

replwoacause 2y ago

Are there any good tcl web frameworks ?

mdaniel 2y ago
~~A very famous(? infamous?) one: https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver#readme~~ https://github.com/aolserver/aolserver#readme~~ sorry, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663259 does a much better job answering than my link
- replwoacause 2y ago
  Awesome! Can’t wait to play with this some more tomorrow. TCL looks like a fun language for my hobby projects.
v9v 2y ago
Rivet (https://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ https://tcl.apache.org/rivet/) may also be of interest.
- replwoacause 2y ago
  Indeed thank you

conoro 2y ago

Love reading this. I spent a few years in the late 90s using Tcl/Tk to build cross-platform installers for Embedded tools/libraries, along with Expect for a bunch of our testing. One of those pragmatic toolsets for getting sh*t done.

kras143 2y ago

In the realm of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), TCL is ubiquitous. Virtually every EDA tool offers a TCL interface or API, making it the predominant language for tool configuration. I've always wondered why TCL hasn't gained traction in other domains. It possesses the elegance of Lisp while maintaining practicality.

pipeline_peak 2y ago

Anyone know if any new projects are using Tcl? Surprised they went with this

cmacleod4 2y ago
Some people like Tcl and use it, some people don't. The Tcl Wiki sees a regular stream of updates - https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/recent https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/recent . Personally I'm working on a Usenet/Web gateway which does web serving, NNTP, caching in Redis, user db in sqlite, all implemented in Tcl - https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng .
- mdaniel 2y ago
  Courtesy of kicking the tires on your app, I discovered: https://github.com/apnadkarni/tcl9-migrate#migration-tool-for-tcl-9 https://github.com/apnadkarni/tcl9-migrate#migration-tool-fo... (via https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67166 https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67166 ) and "EuroTcl 2024 - presentation videos and slides now online" https://openacs.org/conf2024/info/schedule https://openacs.org/conf2024/info/schedule (via https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67134 https://cmacleod.me.uk/ng/comp.lang.tcl/67134 )

dontdieych 2y ago

Nice. `gitk` could be better.

teleforce 2y ago

Fun facts, the author of Tcl and tk is Prof. John Ousterhout, and his Software Design book is in its 2nd edition: A Philosophy of Software Design: https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/book.php https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/book.php

WillAdams 2y ago
This is an _amazing_ book, and one which I am currently working through --- I was reading one chapter, thinking as deeply as I could on it, then re-writing my current project using the lessons from it. Currently on Chapter 11 (Design it Twice), so will probably just finish, then work on a top--bottom re-write (switching from a current model which has a minimal Python core for variables only, and the balance is in OpenSCAD to a new implementation where everything possible is in Python, allowing usage from there via OpenPythonSCAD: https://pythonscad.org/ https://pythonscad.org/ )

tessierashpool9 2y ago

is tcl relevant beyond maintenance of existing legacy projects?

sigzero 2y ago

Outstanding! I know a lot of work has gone into this release. Kudos to the TCT.

butz 2y ago

Tcl/tk Wayland support when?

replwoacause 2y ago

I’m looking forward to installing this and having a play. Looks great

replwoacause 2y ago

So I started playing with TCL for the first time this weekend after seeing this post, and here are my thoughts. I think the language is fun and much different than I’m used to, but my biggest challenge so far is just getting packages installed. There seems to be no current, modern, maintained package manager or central repository, and to do basic stuff like stand up a web server requires compiling from C source. Kinda brutal. TclHttpd failed to compile with TCL 8.6 installed because I guess there was some change in APIs. I didn’t bother spending time figuring out how to patch the C code to make it work because that’s getting in for more than I bargained for. It’s too bad there’s not a simple way to get up and running with packages because for me so far that had been the biggest barrier to entry / deterrent. Also, I wanted to create a ES256 JWT but there’s no good way to do that apparently, due to the dated ecosystem, whereas in other languages this sort of this is just a package install away. I found a third-party solution in the form of Chilkat software but it costs $300 to license. So overall while I think TCL is fun, I can see why people don’t choose it when they want to be productive fast and not have to fuss around with deeply manual things that are commonplace and quick in other languages.

cmacleod4 2y ago
Take a look at http://www.ch-werner.de/LUCK.html http://www.ch-werner.de/LUCK.html . This site builds custom single-file Tcl executables for various architectures. It has a large selection of packages and you can choose which ones get included in the build. E.g if you select tclhttpd to be included in the build and name the output file tcluck, you can then start the web server by running: ./tcluck tcluck/tclhttpd3.5/bin/httpd.tcl This is still using Tcl8.6 though, it will take time for all these packages to be updated to work with Tcl9.0. I am actually running tclhttpd with Tcl9.0 myself, after making a handful of tweaks for compatibility.
cmacleod4 2y ago
I'm not familiar with JWT at all, but I found a description of how to generate an ES256 JWT from the command line: https://techdocs.akamai.com/iot-token-access-control/docs/generate-jwt-ecdsa-keys https://techdocs.akamai.com/iot-token-access-control/docs/ge... . I don't know if this would meet your needs, but from Tcl you could use `exec` to run these commands and read the result.

fithisux 2y ago

More important than Python 3.13. Bravo !!!! Can't wait Scilab and Python to ship with Tcl/Tk 9.0 I think Next Scripting latest releases are 9.0 ready. Keep an eye on Undroidwish and the Binary Releases section of the official page.