An overview of PCTE and PCTE+

The PCTE project has defined a Public Tool Interface on which Software Engineering Environments can be constructed. The interface definition was put into the public domain in September 1986 and several implementations on several machines now exist. The PCTE+ project was set up to define a Public Tool Interface, based on the PCTE work, that could also serve for the development of defense and other high-security applications. This paper summarises the current status of PCTE activity, presents the principal concepts of PCTE and the evolutions that are being proposed in the PCTE+ project.