ActiveState is super excited to announce we’re open sourcing TEAcup/TEApot: one of Tcl’s key community package repository systems. Until now, ActiveState has been internally maintaining and providing TEAcup and TEApot. Now, by open-sourcing these important pieces of the Tcl eco-system, everyone will benefit from peer-review, community collaboration and can tailor them to best suit the Tcl community.
At ActiveState we have been involved in the Tcl, Perl, and Python open source languages for over two decades, and we have provided a package repository and tools for the languages we support. As I mentioned earlier this year in Good Things Come in Managed Packages, we are moving towards using community based package management systems and tools for all of our language distributions. It is our belief that a less fragmented package ecosystem is in the best interests of a language community, and the community should carve out the solution that makes the most sense for the collective ecosystem.
In 2006, ActiveState provided the initial TEApot beta on the Tcl Conference CD, and by 2007 it was in production. This week, with the annual Tcl Conference kicking off in Houston, we’re proud to open source this code with a BSD license.
Tcl core maintainer and ActiveState alumnus Andreas Kupries has graciously agreed to take on maintenance of this important codebase. Andreas was instrumental in making this happen, and we know it is in good hands. Of course, the codebase is one thing, but a centralized set of services needs hosting and ActiveState will continue to sponsor the hosting of TEApot services for the community as well as the main Tcl/Tk site, as we have for many years.
I encourage you to support Andreas and other contributors to this package infrastructure as they are providing a tremendous benefit to everyone. Also be on the lookout for ActiveTcl 8.6.7 in the near future!
You can find the source code at https://github.com/ActiveState/teapot.
If you haven’t tried ActiveTcl or don’t have the latest version you can download it at the link below:
