DN633001852

Subject: Community participation in Tcl development. - DN [1]

Paul Duffin <pduffin@hursley.ibm.com> - 09 Jun 2000 - comp.lang.tcl

 The Tcl core team seem frustrated that the community is not doing enough to
 improve Tcl and the community seem frustrated that the core team are not
 doing enough to address the issues that the community wants addressing.

 The problem as I see it is caused by the 'cathedral' development process that
 Tcl uses. Read the following for some very revealing insights into Open
 Source.
     http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
     http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/

 Changing the development process to a more 'bazaar' like model is something
 that only the moderator (Jeff) can achieve unless someone in the community
 breaks one of the taboos described in
     http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/

 To be fair on Jeff it seems as though that is what he is trying to do.

 BTW. TCT is the Tcl Core Team which as far as I know is Jeff and Eric.

 For the community to participate they need to know that their work is not
 going to be ignored, either because the moderator doesn't agree, or there
 is not enough time. This means that the TCT have to let go of some of
 their responsibilities.

 I think that this enablement of the community is THE MOST IMPORTANT piece
 of work that the TCT has to do, more important than a slightly faster
 string command, or some new widget.

 So what needs to be done and who needs to do what in order for this to
 happen.

     A community named web site, this is just a psychological move
     but it is very important and is one of the reasons why I think
     the community has not got involved as much as before.
         Brent seems to have this in hand.

     Web site resources need to be made available, not necessarily
     to everyone but to those people who have good ideas and some
     time to work on them. This includes the ability to host web
     pages and do CGI scripting / other server side scripting.
         Again this is something that the webmaster needs to do
         which I think is Brent; at least he was the one who
         answered my recent post.

     All the documentation that the TCT have related to the Tcl
     internals needs to be made clearly available. This includes
     such things as parser, and byte compiler documentation.
         Only someone on the TCT can do this.

     The Tcl/Tk core needs to be modularised so that it is possible for
     someone outside the TCT to be given responsibility for a part of
     it. Each module should be buildable either as a loadable extension,
     or as part of the Tcl/Tk binary.
         This restructuring effort can only really be done by
         someone on the TCT as all other development needs to
         be stopped.

 Once all of this effort has been made by the TCT / Webmaster at Ajuba then
 the community can start doing things but until then we are limited in what
 we can / are prepared to do.

     Different distributions could be provided.

     Web site could be improved by say allowing you to go shopping for
     distributions.

     New widgets could be provided.

     More commands could be byte compiled.

     TEA could be improved to ensure that it is just as easy to build
     ten extensions from one package as it is to build one. This
     includes building the extensions into one monolithic binary.

     Binaries for different platforms could be provided.

     .......

 To the TCT
     Please cease development on Tcl 8.4a2, let 8.4a1 have a chance
     to be used by more people and accumulate some patches and in the
     meantime focus on the issues above.

     I think that most people on this newsgroup, at least the people
     who can / are prepared to help would echo my request.