The Jim Interpreter

Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Jim Tcl version 0.83

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.83

Jim Tcl 0.83 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.82

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.83

• stacktrace - support stack frames with no cmd
• vwait - now with -signal, waits on the correct variable
• regexp - fix check for termination in [[:class:]]
• regexp - fix incorrect check for invalid escape sequence at end of charset
• fix rare crash on shutdown
• subst - don’t ignore vars after first failed var
• lsort - support -dict
• json::decode - fix possible crash with invalid input

Features and improvements added in version 0.83

• support multi-level continue, break from loops
• improve display of stack trace for errors
• aio - use Unix I/O rather than stdio (improves behaviour for non-blocking I/O)
• aio open, socket, accept - add -noclose flag
• aio tty - Add support for vstart, vstop and modem control signals
• tcltest - improve constraint system
• jimsh - add interactive hint support
• Add support for proc statics by reference, rather than by value
• info script can now set the current script filename
• Improved error message for nested $()
• json::decode - preserve line numbers if possible

Possible incompatibilities in version 0.83

• Now that aio uses direct Unix I/O rather than stdio, if Jim Tcl is embedded within an application using stdio, there may be unexpected behaviour. For example output to stdout may still be buffered in Tcl when the application writes to stdout. Ensure that output is flushed within Tcl before using the same filehandle from the application.

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Saturday, 25 February 2023

Jim Tcl version 0.82

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.82

Jim Tcl 0.82 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.81

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.82

• dict - under some circumstances it was possible to add duplicate keys to a dict
• file delete - -force and -- were handled incorrectly
• aio: ssl - fix eof detection with openssl3
• getref and setref - now accept fully qualified references
• unset - don’t return a result with -nocomplain
• Garbage collection - sometimes GC was overly zealous
• regexp - builtin regexp fix for end of word check
• dict with - now correctly returns the script result
• Unicode ranges are closed intervals. This affected the character class of the end character of each range.

Features and improvements added in version 0.82

• aio gets - improve behaviour for non-blocking streams
• aio TIP 603 - implement stat of an open file handle
• aio socket pty - filename is now available
• Included sqlite updated to version 3.38.0
• redis extension - enable TCP_KEEPALIVE, add support for -type and -async
• try - add support for trap
• oo constructor is now more flexible (possible incompatibility with 0.81)
• socket - add support for -async
• Updated linenoise now has support for word forward, word backward
• Updated Unicode to 14.0.0
• file normalize - now supported on Windows
• aio copyto - performance improvement for large copies
• Memory allocator is now replaceable
• info frame is now more Tcl compatible (incompatibility with 0.81)
• New timerate command for improved benchmarking - largely compatible with TIP 527
• vwait - add support for -signal for improved handling of signals in the event loop
• clock millis and clock micros - now use monotonic time if possible (not affected by system time changes)
• ensemble and namespace ensemble simplify creation of ensemble commands

Possible incompatibilities in version 0.82

• New approach to oo constructor means some existing code may need to be altered
• info frame now returns a dict rather than a list and can access non-proc frames. stacktrace will continue to work and should be preferred when retrieving a live stack trace
• New ABI version means that compiled extensions will need to be rebuilt to work with this version
• configure now defaults to --full

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Sunday, 28 November 2021

Jim Tcl version 0.81

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.81

Jim Tcl 0.81 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.80

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.81

• info complete - return 0 if the script is missing an end quote
• sqlite3 - return integers as 64 bit values, not 32 bit

Features and improvements added in version 0.81

• New redis client extension
• expr - TIP 582 - support comments in expressions
• Many commands now accept “safe” integer expressions rather than simple integers: loop, range, incr, string repeat, lrepeat, pack, unpack, rand
• string and list indexes now accept “safe” integer expressions
• loop can now omit the start value
• New xtrace command for execution trace support
• Add history keep
• Add support for lsearch -index and lsearch -stride, the latter per TIP 351
• lsort -index now supports multiple indices
• Add support for lsort -stride
• open now supports POSIX-style access arguments
• sdl extension now supports SDL2, and basic text support is added as well as polling support
• ABI version checking is now available to allow dynamic modules to verify they are loaded into a compatible interpreter

Possible incompatibilities in version 0.81

• If the --compat configure option is not set, expr now only allows a single argument (per TIP 526)

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Saturday, 02 January 2021

SDL2 - Jim Tcl sdl extension update

Since the early days of Jim Tcl, the included sdl extension has provided an example of how to integrate an external library as a Jim Tcl extension.

However this extension had not been updated for some time, and did not support the newer SDL2 API.

Now the sdl extension has been updated to support both SDL and SDL2, and also includes some additional features.

Building the extension

configure uses pkg-config to find the required libraries, so be sure to have SDL2_gfx (and optionally SDL2_ttf) installed where pkg-config can find them.

$ pkg-config --modversion SDL2_gfx
1.0.2

Build the sdl extension as a module by specifying it at configure time.

$ ./configure --full --with-mod=sdl
...
Checking for SDL2_gfx ...1.0.2
Checking for SDL2_ttf ...2.0.15
Extension sdl...module
...
$ make
...
	CC	jim-sdl.o
	LDSO	sdl.so
...

Testing the extension

Some test scripts are available in the examples/ directory.

$ ./jimsh examples/sdltest.tcl

$ ./jimsh examples/sdlevents.tcl

Using the extension

Create a window (sdl screen) with the sdl.screen command

. package require sdl
1.0
. set s [sdl.screen 640 480 "Window Title"]
::sdl.surface4

The returned handle provides a number of subcommands. Help is available for each subcommand.

. $s -commands
free flip poll clear pixel circle aacircle fcircle rectangle box line aaline font text
. $s -help fcircle
Usage: ::sdl.surface4 fcircle x y radius red green blue ?alpha?
. $s fcircle 100 100 30 200 0 0
. $s flip

Colours in SDL use separate red, green and blue components. These are specified as integers from 0 to 255. Similarly, the alpha (opacity) is specified from 0 (transparent) to 255 (opaque).

The image commands are as follows:

• clear - clear the entire window to the given colour
• pixel - draw a single pixel
• circle - draw a circle (outline)
• aacircle - draw a circle (outline) with antialiasing
• fcircle - draw a filled circle
• rectangle - draw a rectangle (outline)
• box - draw a filled rectangle
• line - draw a line
• aaline - draw a line with antialiasing

If the SDL2_ttf package is available, basic text support is also provided.

• font - load a TrueType font from a file with the given point size
• text - draw text with the currently loaded font

Some notes on text:

• Only one font may be loaded at a time
• The specified font may not support all unicode glyphs.
• To display utf-8 text, Jim Tcl must have been built with –utf8

There are several non-drawing commands.

• free - close the window and free the handle (the same as: rename $s "")
• flip - update the window to match graphics changes, then clear the background buffer and poll for events
• poll - update the window to match graphics changes, then poll for events

Note that the graphics window is double (or triple) buffered. This means that any graphics changes are not displayed until flip or poll is used. In general, you should display an entire frame and then call flip.

In order to keep the SDL window responsive, it is necessary to pump the SDL event loop. Both flip and poll can be used for this. Currently the only SDL event that is recognised is the SDL_QUIT event. When this event occurs, flip and poll return JIM_EXIT. By default, this will exit the interpreter.

A typical script that simply displays a single image will look like:

... draw the SDL image ...

$s poll { sleep 0.25 }

This will run the SDL event loop and then eval the given script. If SDL_QUIT is ever received, the script will exit.

See examples/sdlevents.tcl for an example of how to integrate the SDL event loop with the Jim Tcl event loop.

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Saturday, 31 October 2020

Jim Tcl version 0.80

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.80

Jim Tcl 0.80 has been released and is available from:

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.79

This release contains bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.80

• return -level 0 -code xxx now returns the correct result
• regexp - fix an issue with failed optional group
• oo - fix an issue when no class variables are given
• oo - fix super invocation with multiple inheritance levels
• tailcall - fix to avoid growing the C stack frame
• regsub -all with \A now works correctly
• scan - fix an issue with chars vs bytes in utf-8 mode
• aio - fix eventloop and eof for ssl connections
• lsearch -regexp - fix the case where the pattern begins with a dash
• lsearch -command - handle the case with too few args
• Disallow renaming a local proc with upcall to avoid inconsistent behaviour

Features and improvements added in version 0.80

• Dictionaries now preserve insertion order
• string map and string compare now support embedded nulls
• string match and other glob matches now support embedded nulls
• Variable and proc names now support embedded nulls
• Interactive mode now prints results containing embedded nulls
• Generate a build warning if system is non-Y2038 compliant
• package names added as an alias for package list
• file rootname, file dirname are now more consistent with Tcl
• aio - add Server Name Indication (SNI) ssl support
• aio - add socket pty support
• The 0d radix prefix is now supported for decimal (base 10)
• String comparison operators lt, gt, le and ge are now supported
• dict getwithdefault (and the alias dict getdef) are now supported
• Build has coverage support, and test coverage is now over 90%
• Performance improvements in a number of areas

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Monday, 03 February 2020

Move primary repo to github

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl is moving to github

As repo.or.cz has been down for some time, the mirror at github has now been designated as the primary repository.

https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)