[racket-dev] Planet 2 Beta Release

I expect we can do a better job in planet2 than we are doing in planet1 and
I am in favor of trying to find that balance.

I would be unhappy, however, if we end up with a system where you have to
grovel around in low-level places to get simple uses of uninstalled
packages working. That is, I want to be able to put in a blog post or in a
talk or somewhere a little program that depends on uninstalled libraries
and, if I'm careful about keeping those libraries that the little file
works with, then that file should Just Work for casual users who download
drracket paste it in, and hit Run.

I not mean to imply we do things just the way planet1 does them. Only that
we find a way for things to just work for casual users.

I realize that this is a hard design problem and that's why I think we
should be thinking about it early. Hopefully my underlying desire is not to
contentious!

Robby

On Monday, November 12, 2012, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Robby Findler
> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <
> samth at ccs.neu.edu <javascript:;>> 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
>
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