Changes/TclTk9.0

Tcl/Tk 9.0

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Tcl/Tk rebase to version 9. There are some major incompatibilities and it's unrealistic to port all depending packages, thus the compat Tcl/Tk 8 packages will be provided.

Owner

• Name: Jaroslav Škarvada
• Email: jskarvad@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 42
• Last updated: 2024-12-05
• [Announced]
• [<will be assigned by the Wrangler> Discussion thread]
• FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Some packages were already ported to Tcl/Tk 9, but some ports are complicated or there is nobody working/interested in the port at the moment thus it's unrealistic to port everything into f42. That's why the compat Tcl/Tk 8 packages will be provided and maintained till there will be packages requiring Tcl/Tk 8. This effort has been announced on the fedora-devel mailing list: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/M77DGL3QJJOUSTAPJHEDUCBFXD2ZANGI/#NGLJHIVECRSUM7IP6IE2IZE5DTTI3SEP

Example of the change in the packages SPEC:

Original package, or package building with the Tcl/Tk 9:

...
BuildRequires: tcl-devel
BuildRequires: tk-devel
...

Package switched to the compat Tcl/Tk:

...
BuildRequires: tcl8-devel
BuildRequires: tk8-devel
...

The switch to the rebased Tcl/Tk and the packages built with the compat should happen atomically through the side-tag.

Feedback

There hasn't been any proposed alternative and no negative feedback yet.

Benefit to Fedora

There are several new features in the Tcl/Tk 9 (details in the #User_Experience). Fedora packages should follow the upstream latest releases.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • rebase Tcl/Tk packages to version 9 (done in copr)
  • get compat Tcl/Tk 8 packages into Fedora
  • fill bugzillas for components not ported to Tcl/Tk 9 to switch to compat Tcl/Tk 8

• Other developers:
  • Developers that will not port their packages to Tcl/Tk 9 will have to switch the BuildRequires: to compat Tcl/Tk 8 devel packages. This can be also done by proven packagers or the feature owner (proven packager) in case there will be no reaction to the created bugzillas.

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number
  • There is probably no need to coordinate this with the Release engineering.

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

It should seamlessly update. Packages ported to Tcl/Tk 9 will require Tcl/Tk 9 and unported packages will require compat Tcl/Tk 8.

Early Testing (Optional)

Do you require 'QA Blueprint' support? N

How To Test

1. Install Tcl/Tk depending packages, e.g. expect, gitk, ..., check the list of packages in the #Dependencies
2. Check functionality of the package.

User Experience

User experience should improve due to the new features supported by Tcl/Tk 9, e.g.:

• 64-bit Capacity: Data values larger than 2Gb.
• Unicode and Encodings: full codepoint range, added encodings, encoding profiles to govern I/O, and more.
• Access to OS facilities: notifications, print, and tray systems.
• Scalable Vector Graphics: partial support in images, extensive use to enable scalable widget and theme appearances.
• Platform Features and Conventions: many improvements, including two-finger gesture support where available.

Full list in: https://www.tcl-lang.org/software/tcltk/9.0.html

Dependencies

Some of the packages listed bellow only explictly require the Tcl interpreter and could work with the new Tcl package even without rebuild or compat version. Packages implicitly requiring the Tcl/Tk libraries (i.e. these that will 100 % require port/rebuild or compat version) are included in the Copr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/jskarvad/TclTK9.0.0/

blt
brazil
brltty
bwidget
catdoc
cgnslib
classified-ads
deal
eggdrop
emacspeak
environment-modules
eth-tools
expect
fmtools
gcl
gensio
git
git-cola
gpsman
graphviz
gtkwave
hamlib
hfsutils
hping3
html2ps
iaxclient
ifm
insight
irsim
itcl
itk
iwidgets
linsmith
llvm-test-suite
Lmod
magic
maxima
med
memchan
mercurial
mmtests
mpqc
nagelfar
nbdkit
ncid
netgen-mesher
ngspice
ocaml-lablgl
ocaml-labltk
ocaml-ocamlnet
ogdi
opencascade
openmsx
owfs
packmol
pcb
pgplot
pidgin
planets
plplot
postgresql15
postgresql16
pypy
pypy3.10
pypy3.9
PySolFC
python3.10
python3.11
python3.12
python3.13
python3.14
python3.6
python3.8
python3.9
R
remind
rrdtool
R-tkrplot
rubygem-tk
snobol4
sqlite
sqlite2
stk
svxlink
systemtap
tcl-ezsmtp
tcllib
tcl-mysqltcl
tcl-pgtcl
tcl-signal
tcl-snack
tcl-tclreadline
tcl-tcludp
tcl-tclvfs
tcl-tclxml
tcl-thread
tcl-tileqt
tcl-tkpng
tcl-tktreectrl
tcltls
tcl-togl
tcl-trf
tclx
tcl-zlib
tdom
texlive-base
tix
tkabber
tkdnd
tkimg
tklib
tktray
torque
usb_modeswitch
uudeview
vim-syntastic
vkeybd
weechat
wordnet
xapian-bindings
xbindkeys
xcircuit
xpa
xschem
x11vnc
yaz
yosys
znc

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Contingency mechanism shouldn't be needed. In the worst case, use of the compat packages should provide the same user experience as with the previous Fedora release. The hard and dirty way to rollback everything is to drop the compat packages, bump the epoch of the Tcl/Tk, revert it to the version 8 and bump and rebuilt depending packages. This can be done by the feature owner.
• Contingency deadline: beta freeze
• Blocks release? No

Documentation

https://www.tcl-lang.org/software/tcltk/9.0.html