contributing to tcl/parrot 
a brief overview on how to help out,
if you're interested.
In general,
it's ok to send patches for tcl to the RT system for anything that isn't "BIG STUFF" - those,
please bounce off me first.
I'd prefer diff -u patches,
but am happy to take complete files as well.
Most of this is mentioned in the TODO - in fact, this document probably should merge with the TODO to avoid redundancy.
BIG STUFF
- speed
- We're currently a bit slow, compared to tclsh. Switching over to a compiler instead of an interpreter might help here, though I'm having a hard time envisioning a compiler that doesn't have to do all the things we already do as an interpreter.
- We could rewrite parse/interpret/compile in C, either as an NCI or behind a PMC object - this would possibly give us an improvement in speed also.
- features
- We're currently missing a lot of stuff that requires support from parrot before we can continue,
like Unicode for the
\uescapes. I've tried to start documenting these in the TODO with sections likegiven Unicode, then listing the things that we can do once we have that.
DOCUMENTATION
- pod
- Every PIR .sub that's defined should probably have some POD to go along with it to document the arguments and return values.
- big picture docs.
- Are the docs in
docs/useful? Could use someone to proof them, and verify that there are no missing chunks (if missing, write them, or get them added to theTODO), and that they are coherent. - TODO
- Clean up the TODO formatting, esp. the "given" sections, and come up with a list of any other missing features that aren't listed there.
PIR
- Missing Commands
- Every builtin command corresponds to a file with an appropriately named sub in
lib/commands- Each of these subs takes some number of PMCs as arguments. For those commands that take a fixed number of parameters, we declare them with.param. For those that take a variable number, we use thefoldupopcode. - Note that there are two return values for each command, an int and a PMC. The integer contains the Tcl return value for that command (OK, BREAK, RETRUN, etc.). The PMC is usually a string at this point, but could be any valid PMC. Note - right now, if there's an error condition, create a new string-like PMC and put the error condition in it. Eventually this will be some kind of structure.
- Once you write a command (or add a subcommand),
you need to add a test file ( or a test in an existing) file in
t/- tests forputs, for example, go int/cmd_puts.t- we use theTest::Harnessframework, viaParrot::Test. To run your test, just saymake testin the top level tcl directory. Be sure to test each of the subcommands. While our eventual goal is to pass the tcl test suite, we really need to maintain a good one on our own in the meantime. - To find a command to work on, just check out the TODO - several commands are currently not implemented, and others are missing various subcommands.
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
- Around line 32:
- =back doesn't take any parameters, but you said =back 4
- Around line 54:
- =back doesn't take any parameters, but you said =back 4
- Around line 86:
- =back doesn't take any parameters, but you said =back 4
