Based on brief discussion in #tcl on IRC (27 Nov, 2011 (TZ is PST)):
19:41 stu: colin: You can't get rid of snit because too many things use it. 19:41 stu: Don't be snit snotty! :p 19:42 stu: And some things use stooop. Wow, haven't heard that name in a while. 19:45 colin: I can get rid of snit by rewriting them all. 19:45 colin: Give me a week and a kg of coffee 19:46 stu: heh 19:46 stu: The plaid LANs of lice and hens. (there may be a joke in there somewhere) 19:47 stu: "The best ..." 19:49 colin: what's more of a hassle is the tcllib stuff which invents its own OO system, more or less copypasta'd from other tcllib stuff. 19:49 colin: Yes, I'm looking at you, http.tcl 19:50 kbk: http.tcl 's object system is ancient - it was the source of a lot of that copypasta 19:51 kbk: mmm, copypasta with a tasty source - give me a nice chianti with it, and an Italian salad and some crusty bread... 19:51 stu: The best glazed hams, with rice and peas. 19:51 yukonbob: there's next years' (and the year thereafter, and thereafter, and thereafter) GSoC projects. 19:52 yukonbob: convert ad hoc OO to New Hotness.
APN Any such change would mean new tcllib releases of those modules would not support older Tcl versions, certainly not 8.4- and not 8.5 either since that would require a binary extension.
DKF: They'd probably be best off being done as new major versions given the substantial change in dependencies.