[plt-dev] Re: Generated files and co-existing copies of DrScheme

The "300" in the planet cache path contains stuff that is common to
all 3xx and 4.x versions (cached copies of the uninstalled .plt
files... maybe that's all?).

Robby

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> On Nov 17, Carl Eastlund wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> > That's a bunch of issues, and three proposals: (1) set up PLTUSERDIR
>> > to control placement of Planet and Scribble generated files, (2) pick
>> > a conventional place in the PLT tree for users to store it who can and
>> > wish to do so, and (3) longer term, think about a way to fit
>> > development link code into this story.  So -- what do the rest of you
>> > developer folks think?
>>
>> I did #1 and #2 on a branch
>> (http://svn.plt-scheme.org/plt/branches/cce/plt+addon-dir).  I
>> updated the C implementation of (find-system-path 'addon-dir) to
>> first check the PLTADDONDIR environment variable; Planet and
>> Scribble both use the addon-dir, so it seems to be the right point
>> of control.  I also updated the Scribble documentation for
>> find-system-path, and added an svn:ignore property for
>> $PLTHOME/add-on as a canonical place for in-tree add-on directories.
>
> I see several issues with this:
>
> 1. As much as I personally like environment variables, it seems that
>   they're generally confusing.  Doing this change as another variable
>   means that now the exact collection search is determined by:
>   - $PLTCOLLECTS
>   - Uses of `-S', `-X', and `-U'
>   - $PLTADDONDIR
>   - Any dynamic changes to the search path
>   The first is a good source of complaints and confusion, and adding
>   another environment variable seems like it will make things worse.
>   (It doesn't help that Windows and even OSX users find it difficult
>   to control them.)
>
>   So, I think that a command-line argument would be better.  It might
>   even make sense to use `+U'.
>
> 2. There is a potential problem with code that uses `find-system-path'
>   with 'addon-dir where 'pref-dir should have been used.  But at
>   least on my system I don't see anything that would break.
>
> 3. IIUC, the only problem that this solves is using several different
>   installations with the same version number, is this true?  Is that
>   problem *so* common?  If so, then maybe have instead a way to use
>   your own additional suffix to the version part that gets used in
>   ~/.plt-scheme/<here>/ and ~/.plt-scheme/planet/300/<here>/ ?
>
>   Or maybe go the other way -- make the default addon-dir include the
>   version (so on linux it becomes ~/.plt-scheme/<version>), and have
>   no version directory for the local collects (so they end up in
>   exactly the same place), planet can drop the version directory too
>   (and the redundantly outdated "300" part).  Then it makes more
>   sense to have a command line flag or environment variable move
>   everything, without getting a second level of version-dependant
>   directories.  (The only problem that I see here is that the planet
>   "cache" is less of a cache than it is now.)
>
> --
>          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
>                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!
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