[plt-scheme] package management issues

From: Neil W. Van Dyke (neil at neilvandyke.org)
Date: Mon Mar 3 02:27:37 EST 2003

Is anyone quietly working on package management for PLT, or would like to?

I have a set of add-on PLT packages that I want to use more (SSAX,
SXML-Tools, WebIt, Swindle, SGL, HtmlPrag, etc.), which presents two
problems:

  1. I need to make sure all of the packages are installed on all of my
     machines, and (usually) that the same versions are installed on all
     machines.

  2. I'll want to release my own add-on packages and programs that
     depend on several other add-on packages, but there's no easy way
     for users to download and install all the necessary versions of the
     necessary packages (plus make sure they don't break any existing
     version dependencies the user may have).  This compounds the usual
     engineer's unease with creating interdependencies.

These problems are easily solved for Debian GNU/Linux users by simply
repackaging ".plt" files as ".deb" packages and putting them in Debian's
repository (just as Debian does for hundreds of Perl CPAN packages).
That would solve #1 for me, but not #2, since I don't want to limit my
user base to Debian.

I've also thought of various kludges for #1 (e.g., putting a
site-specific "collects" tree into a site-specific CVS repository and
running "setup-plt" after every CVS update, or sharing a directory of
".plt" files and keeping track of which versions have been installed
where), but I'd like a solution for both #1 and #2.

-- 
                                             http://www.neilvandyke.org/


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