[racket-dev] current packages' docs, errors, and conflicts

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 11:35 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> At Tue, 8 Jul 2014 10:15:10 -0400, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
>>  - I wonder if using Docker instead of VirtualBox could make
>> incrementality easier, since that's one of things that they focus on.
>
> I don't think it would be easier, but it might be more efficient and
> even easier to set up, so it seems worth trying.
>
> If you're interested in trying that, the information below should help
> you get oriented.

I'll look into this.

>>  - I wanted to be able to see which of my packages had problems, so I
>> wrote this PR: https://github.com/plt/racket/pull/721 but I'm not sure
>> how to test it.
>
> I've merged and tweaked that change, but maybe you want to make more
> changes... I don't have a good way to try it other than to run a full
> build.

Great, that's what I figured.

>>  - I think we need to support planet packages -- there are some people
>> still releasing new ones, and there are old ones would take
>> non-trivial work to port.
>
> Supporting Planet packages is a lot of work. Overcoming constrained
> network access in the sandbox is the most obvious problem and probably
> easy to solve. A more subtle and important piece of the puzzle is the
> notion of "built" packages, which can be quickly installed for
> dependent packages or for assembling documentation at the end. Planet
> packages don't have a "built" concept, and a package that depends on a
> Planet package won't have the right "built" properties: it will
> install, but not quickly.
>
> I think we're much better off moving Planet packages to supported
> packages in the new package system --- at least, for use by packages in
> the new package system.

i was mostly thinking of handling packages from
planet-compat.racket-lang.org, which would avoid (some of) the network
access issues and perhaps also the "built" package issues.

But maybe the problem then just reappears for the regular Planet
packages that the planet-compat packages depend on?

Sam