[racket-dev] proposal for moving to packages

I'm not sure I follow on why binary packages make it easier to reduce
dependencies between packages, or why binary packages offer faster
installs.

I'm guessing that binary packages prevent cyclic dependencies between
packages, but it seems like there are many other options that still
get this side effect. Such as explicit checks when building the
package.

For faster installs, the only benefit I see of binary packages over
precompiled source packages is a small savings in size which doesn't
seem like it would amount to much of the install time.

Can someone explain the claims for binary packages?

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Jon Zeppieri <zeppieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:04 PM, Neil Van Dyke <neil at neilvandyke.org> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> Example: Imagine I'm in the middle of writing a Racket program and am
>> wondering about characteristics of some kind of I/O port in Racket.  With
>> transparent source accessibility, I can just click on an identifier in my
>> program in DrRacket to start browsing the implementation.  Maybe I see a
>> possible improvement, or seeing the source pre-empts yet another email list
>> question that otherwise only Matthew could answer, or I feel empowered to go
>> add a new feature.  If the source is not as accessible, then I'm more likely
>> to be a mere naive user of the tools, rather than to understand the tools
>> and help improve them.
>>
>
> +inf.0
>
> Though the easiest way to make the source available is just to keep it
> in the distribution. I'll be sad to see it go.
>
> -Jon
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