[racket-dev] proposal: `data' collection

Those numbers seem pretty small in today's disk sizes, but I do agree
that there is value in being able to divide up the distribution and to
be able to stratify things so we can better keep track of our
dependencies. (BTW, just a random question: have you thought about
trying to visualize the collection-level dependencies with, say, dot?)

It seems like you're after something that would allow multiple
collections with the same name. Is that part of it, all of it, or
mostly irrelevant to your main issue?

Robby

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 1:15 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> [Sorry for the late reply.]
>
>
> On Jun 30, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>> Which part is a symptom? My request for a description when there's
>> no owner?
>>
>> The no-owner fact?
>>
>> The unstable collects?
>
> "All of the above."
>
> Here are some questions that can demonstrate the problem better:
>
> 1. What text would you expect to find in the "purpose.txt" file of
>   `unstable'?  Of `data'?
>
> 2. My course code is installed in a local collection named `pl'.  Why
>   would I need to rename it if a new `pl' module was added to the
>   racket distribution?
>
> 3. Say that you want to install apache on your machine.  What would
>   you think if your OS tells you that you need to install powerpoint
>   for that?
>
> 4. Assuming that there is a `data' collection with a few known data
>   structures implemented, what happens when there's another data
>   structure that happens to be just the thing for some project X
>   and otherwise it's not too useful, or at least it seems that way.
>   Why can't project X come with a new data/foo module?
>
> In any case, keep in mind that there is another way to make me stop
> saying "coherent" and "package" -- give up the idea of ever getting a
> smaller racket distribution, and the problem is solved.  We won't even
> need the distribution specs, since everything will be included...
> (From my POV, this would work out great since it looks like the
> general attitude towards it is that it's just something that *I*
> choose to be concerned with, and otherwise there's no problems.)
>
> For reference, here's a table of installer sizes (the Windows one,
> which has the highest compression) and source bundle size (the unix
> one, which has the highest compression in the sources bundles), with
> roughly one representative per year:
>
>                 bin   src
>      ver  year  size  size
>      ---  ----  ----  ----
>       53  1998  2.6M
>      103  2000  3.4M  4.6M
>      200  2001  4.3M  6.7M
>      203  2002  4.8M  6.0M
>      205  2003  5.8M  7.6M
>      209  2004  8.4M  11M
>      300  2005  12M   13M
>      372  2007  14M   15M
>      4.0  2008  22M   14M
>      4.2  2009  25M   15M
>      5.0  2010  28M   16M
>
> --
>          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
>                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!
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