[racket-dev] Planet 2 Beta Release

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> 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.

That's what I'm proposing as the default, btw.

Jay

>
> Sam



--
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