[racket-dev] package-system update

At Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:02:28 -0400, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
> First, thanks for the very informative update.
> 
> On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> > [Guess:] The "Racket" and "Minimal Racket" distributions might point
> > to different pre-built package catalogs. Possibly, the "Racket"
> > catalog never updates packages that were included in the installer (on
> > the grounds that the user may not have write permission to the
> > install), while the "Minimal Racket" catalog includes more frequent
> > updates for bug fixes (on the grounds that the user can update any
> > installed package).
> 
> I'm not 100% sure what you mean about "different pre-built package
> catalogs" but I definitely feel that we should just have one site like
> `pkg.racket-lang.org` where people go to see what packages they might
> install in their Racket installation.  This comes back to the point
> you make below about how technology, here the package server, can keep
> a distributed community together.

Yes, "pkg-racket-lang.org" is where you go to find out what packages
are available.

But when you run `raco pkg install' or `raco pkg update', then the
package details are not necessarily determined by
"pkg.racket-lang.org". The package might be downloaded as pre-built
from someplace suitable to your specific installation.

The term "package catalog" is used in the quoted text above to the
refer to the server that `raco pkg install' consults first. The (very)
speculative part is that the "Racket" and "Minimal Racket"
installations might check different places first. But both kinds of
installation would definitely include "pkg.racket-lang.org" in the set
of catalogs that they check.

> Finally, can you say anything about whether you anticipate the release
> process changing?  Would it be possible to decouple the core Racket
> releases from, say, the Typed Racket releases, with a release of the
> whole system bundling specific versions of everything?

I expect that we'll want to do that, but I'm not sure it will work well
for all users. The idea behind the "Racket" versus "Minimal Racket"
package-catalog speculation was that people might opt into decoupled
releases by using the "Minimal Racket" distribution.