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From: EvoTcl <evotcl@evotcl.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: eTcl v2.0.1 (Feather of the Phoenix)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:06:09 -0700
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On 7/23/25 09:20, saito wrote:

> Congratulations! I was looking forward to this announcement.

Thanks for your very early interest, greatly appreciate the enthusiasm!

> I noticed it is based on Tcl9.  Is there a Tcl 8.x version?

A complete Tcl 8.6 branch (with all features backported to it, 
especially our own SVG handling and virtual Fs) is built by CI and 
supported. I was hoping to not have to manage twice more releases, and 
somehow thought that since eTcl aims at providing a modernized 
distribution, backward compatibility was less of an issue and focusing 
on Tcl 9 would create an incentive to accelerate migration.

But I understand there are still plenty of needs for legacy code to be 
supported, and a Tcl 8.6 release brings convenience. So... Since it 
seems you care for Windows release, I just uploaded a etcl86 release for 
Windows (64-bit), both:

- on https;//www.evotcl.com/ but until the UI of home page is updated, 
you will have to use direct links:

  
https://www.evotcl.com/assets/distrib/v2.0.1/mswin/etcl86-2.0.1-mswin-x64-setup.exe

  
https://www.evotcl.com/assets/distrib/v2.0.1/mswin/etcl86-2.0.1-mswin-x64.zip

- on GitHub, as a distinct v2.0.1-tcl8 release, see:

   https://github.com/evotcl/etcl/releases

If you are interested in Tcl8-based release for another platform, or for 
the WebAssembly release, let me know (the latter is easy, it can be 
deployed at any time by ourselves). Note that the 8.6 branch is much 
less tested, so don't hesitate to share your experience with it.

> Does the installation mess up any previous Tcl installs on the system? 
> Sometimes they change file associations and stuff and it is difficult to 
> restore things back.

The "distribution" is made of a battery-included, fully relocatable 
single file executable, which does *not* need to save any configuration 
in registry or anywhere. So if you use the ZIP or tar release, you can 
safely expand the archive wherever you wish, and use it from there, side 
by side with any other eTcl or Tcl/Tk distributions. The 'Settings' 
activity in the default eTcl UI allows to set file associations, but 
this is not triggered by default.

As a convenience, the Windows installer offers, during installation, an 
option to register file association. There is a checkbox to control this 
option, so unless there is a bug in the installer configuration, file 
association should not be set unless requested. But if wanting to be 
reassured, getting the executable from the ZIP release and putting it 
wherever you wish is the safe path.

Eric Hassold