[plt-dev] Re: [plt-translators] Translations for test engine

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> On Apr 23, Robby Findler wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Michael Sperber
>> <sperber at deinprogramm.de> wrote:
>> > If so, is there documentation or anything that describes what
>> > dependencies are OK and which one's aren't?
>>
>> I believe Eli maintains this information. Generally the way it works
>> is someone adds require somewhere that breaks things and Eli lets
>> them know when a script fails somewhere. I don't know if the precise
>> list is available on the web, but I'm sure Eli would be more than
>> happy to make it be so if it isn't.
>
> * This is in iplt/build/distribution-specs.
>
> * Yes, there is a dependency now, this is bad -- but making it worse
>  is not a good idea.  (You can see this by the fact that
>  "test-engine" appears in dr-extras instead of plt-extras)

I do not believe Mike has actually made it worse in any interesting
way. It will require a few more Emacs macros to undo his changes, but
that can only happen when the larger problem is fixed.

Put another way: we should not stand in the way of Mike for this
reason. It was not his doing that put us in this bind so we should not
punish him!

> * There is another issue here which is that the teaching languages are
>  intended to be used by themselves, are used in a handin server
>  situation, etc.  Adding a preference-dependent option to this kind
>  of thing is bad.

The word "adding" is misused here, iiuc. Whatever thing needs to be
done so that check-expect works in the handin server still needs to be
done and what Mike has done does not changed that.

Robby