[racket-dev] Planet 2 Beta Release

Jay: do you prefer off-line commentage?

Meanwhile, I'll re-use some of Sam's text (I generally +1 all items
that I have omitted):


20 minutes ago, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
> 
> * I think tying to GitHub is a mistake -- the system should work for
> for arbitrary Git repositories.

I very much agree with this -- but I don't want to see github support
gone, just have it added as some plugin into the whole thing that can
make github easier to work with.  With something like this it will be
easy to write new ones for other places when people want them.


> Having a short syntax for github is great, though.

IIUC, the branch in the path is required, is that the case?  If so,
then I think that it should really work without it too, to get the
simple https://github.com/user/repo syntax.


> * I think we should drop the `.plt` archive format entirely.

+17.  I don't think that it can be removed completely though, but it
definitely sounds like a mistake to use it as the default for creating
new packages.


> * It would be nice to have fewer special files.  For example,
> `MANIFEST` could be abolished by just fetching the whole content of
> the directory.  Checksums could be included in the `METADATA` file.

+1 for fewer files.

As for Sam's comment on MANIFEST -- I disagree with that -- it *is*
required if you want to just make the files visible on some web page.
(Since you cannot rely on a directory listing.)  It could be optional
for formats that have a way to get that list though.


> * Similarly, the names of the special files could avoid ALL-CAPS,
> and I'd go with the name 'package' rather than `metadata`.

Excited +1 for both!  (When I look at a directory listing, I'd like
them to be de-emphasized.)


> * We really need valid SSL certificates for any user-facing sites.
> StartSSL gives them away for free: http://www.startssl.com/

(Last time I looked, free SSLs weren't ones that would get trusted by
default popular browsers.  If you're talking about some certificate,
then making them is easy.)


> * I thought the conclusion of a recent discussion on dev@ was that
> tests, typed, etc sub-collections *are* preferred.

Yes -- I said that, with the strong preference for projects being a
self-contained directory, which would make management much simpler.
(On authors, clients, and code.)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!