No subject

------------------

The snapshot site

   http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/snapshots/

demonstrates how a lot is working.

Here are the remaining implementation issues:

 * Generated distribution sites do not yet include a source code
   option or "collects.tgz" for piggy-backing distributors, and the
   makefile or configuration file lacks support for piggy-backing.

   These seem straightforward to add.

 * The PLT-maintained packages are not yet reflected on
   "pkg.racket-lang.org".

   Because all of those packages are currently in one big git
   repository, it's not clear how to register the packages. Guesses #1
   and #2 in "Developing Racket like PLT developers" above are two
   possible routes. Another is that we set up a process to pull from
   git and bundle package sources into individual zip archive that are
   registered on "pkg.racket-lang.org".

 * The `make installers' support needs to be less tied to
   "main-distribution".

   You can configure the set of packages that are built and included
   in installers by `make installers', but that set currently must be
   be a subset of the packages in the "pkgs" directory of the Racket
   repository. It's easy in principle to pull the packages from a
   catalog server, but there will be some issues to sort out in the
   bootstrapping process and in ensuring a consistent snapshot.

 * No support yet for generated distributions sites with binary
   packages.

   Probably not too difficult. I forget what went wrong last time I
   tried this, but a lot has been fixed since then. In any case, the
   idea of binary packages does not seem to have gained much traction.

 * Package-dependency checking for tests.

   Maybe it's just a matter of compiling tests sorting them into
   suitable packages, like everything else, which is a direction that
   we've already started.

 * The "main-distribution" package needs to be cleaned up.

   The "main-distribution" package currently inclues tests, and it
   includes packages like "honu" that are not in the current release.
   This clean-up task is related to sorting out tests.

 * Different builds modes are not yet configured with different
   default package scopes.

   Should be easy.

I also have a long-ish list of minor repairs and usability
improvements to tackle.