[racket-dev] Planet 2 Beta Release

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Robby Findler
<robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> * I think the auto-installing module resolver mentioned in "Short
>>>> Term" is a bad idea -- it's already really easy to install packages
>>>> with this system, and auto-installation just introduces possibility
>>>> for headaches.
>>>
>>> I don't think it is *bad* idea, but I also don't think it is
>>> *necessary*. But there are other people in the Racket group who think
>>> this is totally necessary for Planet 2. I'll let them explain why.
>>
>> I'll look forward to that explanation.
>
> I think it is important that you can get a program from the web, put
> it into DrRacket, hit run, and get Something Good to happen, without
> having to go type at command lines and whatnot. (This is especially
> true for Windows, the platform something like 95% of our users use.)

I agree entirely that we need a non-command-line way of installing
packages, and we should provide a GUI for handling that in DrRacket.

I think that the percentage of our users that install new packages is
much less Windows-heavy than the overall user base.

I think a system where DrRacket can, in some modes, prompt the user to
install packages would be a big improvement over automatic
installation.  Right now, running a file can trigger automatic
installation of arbitrary numbers of packages, some of which then
conflict or which have errors that the user can't be expected to
understand.  This is even worse when the user didn't know anything
about the packages being installed.

Sam