[plt-scheme] Application distribution mechanisms ...

At Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:22:16 +0800, kumar wrote:
> However, for those who *do* have DrScheme installed, it'll be nice to
> have a distribution mechanism that isn't as big as options 2 or 3. It'll
> be awesome if we can install a runtime and create application packages
> that are on the average < 100k without resources. Is this possible
> at the moment? It used to be possible with v3xx, but with v4xx
> it looks like support for this mode has been removed. Am I right?

Long before the end of the v3xx series, we moved away from installing
libraries into a shared or system area. Windows DLLs used to go into
the system folder, and Mac OS X frameworks used to go in
"/Library/Frameworks". We moved away from that kind of installation
because it created problems for non-administrators and non-expert
administrators.

Also, we concluded that if a user already has DrScheme installed, then
you could given them a Planet path or ".plt" file that creates an
executable, instead of trying to distribute executables. As an added
benefit, installing a Planet or ".plt" package avoids a lot of linking
and compatibility problems with shared-library versions.

We could bring back support for creating an installation with libraries
in a standard place (the --enable-libfw configuration option probably
still works for Mac OS X) and for building executables that assume such
an installation. For this to be the right default installation, tough,
there'd have to be many users downloading many PLT-based executables,
and the users must really want executables instead of
executable-creating ".plt" files. Is there such a group of people?