[racket-dev] Planet 2 Beta Release

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 7:09 PM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> Version-specific installation
> -----------------------------
> Not to speak too much on Jay's behalf, but I think he isn't convinced
> that the new default is right. If `--shared' is the default, then a
> `raco pkg update' could be enough to get all your installed packages
> working with a new version. If installation is instead
> version-specific, then you have to reinstall every package that you use
> whenever you upgrade.
>
> I think that if installation is all-version by default, then users who
> are going to end up with bad configurations that they have trouble
> repairing. A better way to deal with upgrades would be something like
> `raco pkg migrate'.
>
> If we decide that version-specific is the right default to keep, and if
> some would still like a more convenient way to manage all-version
> packages, we could add an environment variable that makes `--shared'
> the default.

Something that bothers me a lot of P1 is that when I install an
upgrade, I lose all my packages. This means that the documentation
search suddenly starts returning different things, so I forget about
which packages I had installed at all. I only discover this when I go
to write something and have a long install and download process. Or,
when I run a script I wrote a long time ago and it doesn't return
instantly, but spawns an install.

I'm much less worried about Racket versions breaking installed
packages than Matthew. I don't think it is that common for core
changes to break things and when it does happen, P2 is designed to
easily allow you to upgrade all your packages to the latest versions,
something that was very inconvenient with P1. I.e. you can do "raco
pkg update --all", which isn't possible with P1.

Jay

--
Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay

"The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93