[plt-dev] renaming programs in the distribution

From: Sam Tobin-Hochstadt (samth at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 19 13:38:21 EDT 2010

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:26 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 1:18 PM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>> Or maybe the the problem is trying to put all command-line tools as
>> commands within something like `rico'.
>
> Yes, I think that is exactly the problem.  I already have a generic
> command-line tool, it's called "bash".  We don't need to write a shell
> program.  If we have related operations, we should put them in one
> tool.  Anything unrelated should be separate.  For instance, in order
> to write Racket code, I need to compile code (setup-plt), read
> documentation (plt-help), and install packages (planet).  So it makes
> sense to put those together.
>
> Playing games and running a web server are not directly in support of
> the actual writing of code, so I'd consider them separate.  Example
> PLT applications, but not part of the development process.

I agree 100% with Carl.

Another thing to note is that if we want other people to write
programs in Racket, we should provide examples of what that looks
like.  And it shouldn't look like "write a tool invoked with 'rico'" -
that isn't how people who write programs in any other language work.

>> Maybe `rico' really should be
>> for *programming* tools... but what do we produce other than
>> programming tools?
>
> Games and web servers, apparently.

And presentation tools.
-- 
sam th
samth at ccs.neu.edu


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