To get the process started, Tcl 9 could be nothing more than Tcl 8.6 + TIP 114 (DieOctal).

That doesn’t mean there has to be a formal 9.0 release, but there does have to be an announcement and a source tree that can be downloaded and tried. This should happen sooner rather than later, especially given that Miguel, Joe, George and others are already experimenting with VM performance.

In addition to the source distribution, it would be advantageous to have a regular starkit build for common platforms - to make it easier for people to try out new features without having to “install” a distribution that might collide with their existing Tcl/Tk installation.