[plt-scheme] End-user instructions for upgrading single PLaneT package

Robby Findler wrote at 05/18/2009 10:52 AM:
> Well, it is a bit more complex than that, due to the "no automatic
> upgrades" mantra we adpoted early on in planet. Specifically, there
> can be multiple versions at once of a given planet package and two
> requires of the same package can actually be mapped to different
> versions, depending on how the installation happened. Might be worth
> having a look at Jacob's Scheme workshop paper on planet.
>
> But I do agree that we need a better setup for planet packages whose
> main purpose is a drscheme tool and to support beginners.
>   

This is a user-initiated upgrade, not an automatic one.

I think that wanting to make it easy for users to selectively upgrade 
packages is a general need, not specific to educational DrScheme tools.  
(What's more questionable is the existing functionality in PLaneT, which 
effectively upgrades *all* PLaneT packages.)

The only exception I see to wanting make it easy for user to selectively 
upgrade packages is when you have a configuration of specific versions 
of packages that has been integrated and QA'd, such as for a production 
server.  In that case, you'd effectively require exact versions anyway, 
so that you get the exact versions regardless of what PLaneT cache 
exists on whichever machine it is deployed.

That is the exception, not the general mode, which is that people are 
mixing and matching different versions all the time and the PLaneT 
versioning system is designed to support that.

User-initiated selective upgrades should work fine, given that the 
versioning system works, and they fit a typical usage scenario of users 
wanting to upgrade to get new enhancements into their PLaneT cache.

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/