[racket-dev] PLaneT(2): Single vs multi-collection packages

Yesterday, Laurent wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> 
>     To clarify, because of reasons that I won't go into on the list,
>     the actual chances of me getting this implemented (and of such a
>     change being accepted) are pretty much in the area of "slim to
>     none".  
> 
> That's a bummer. At first sight I'd have thought that it would have
> just been a matter of creating a directory with the same name as the
> package, and then decompressing the package into that directory.

At the lower level, packages use links, and "raco link"'s default mode
of work is at the collection level.  There is obviously a need for
packages that correspond to collection roots, but I wanted to see the
default being the same as the raco-link default (which fits most uses
that don't come out of the current main tree).


>     TBH, the chances of implementing an `in-url' are low too, but
>     they're probably higher than going into the package system.
> 
> That would be nice, but I'd much much prefer to see the
> single-collection package thing implemented.

Well, the reason I think that plain collection packages are important
is it will simplify dealing with packages, and lower the investment
threshold that you need to publish a package.  Along the same line,
there should also be a way to put out just a single file (or very few)
as a first step where I make some code public but with absolutely
minimum effort on the publisher's side.  See for example the
"Processing" thread, where Sean said that people who do these kind of
thing "don't even know what source control is, let alone packages" --
so the existence of such a crowd is a perfect reason for a single-file
thing being another important point on the code distribution spectrum.

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