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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I recently asked HN if Tcl is still relevant in 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41108667

Nice to see a new release coming out not too long after such a question :)

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

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…

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.

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.

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://github.com/naviserver-project/naviserver

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35648805

https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6164

[2] https://openacs.org/about/history

https://openacs.org/

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Tcl/tk Wayland support when?

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

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

Are there any good tcl web frameworks ?

Nice. `gitk` could be better.

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.

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

is tcl relevant beyond maintenance of existing legacy projects?

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