[plt-scheme] PLT-Scheme on Ubuntu

On Apr  2, Todd O'Bryan wrote:
> I've tried to understand the vagaries of Debian packaging so that I
> could maybe supply a script or something Eli could use when he
> builds releases to go ahead and build a Debian/Ubuntu version.
> Unfortunately, I haven't had much success. Even getting together an
> install package for something as simple as a Java program like BlueJ
> or DrJava has been beyond me, and PLT Scheme throws in much more
> complication.

I tried that too once, with RPMs for Fedora.  The main problem with
both packaging formats is that they really want to be the source and a
specification for building it.  It's possible with both to just
package up a bunch of binary files, but that doesn't interact nicely
with what the distros want.  So instead, I just made our own shell
installer which is easy to use (and includes an uninstaller too), and
that's the preferred way to install things if you want an updated
version.

(And yes, there is still a point to having an RPM package for an
installer, since it plugs into the system's idea of installed packages
and some sysadmins will not install anything else.  But even if I
invest the time to do this, there are people who would want this to
come from a yum repository that will be able to push out updates (=
even more work to set up), and some will just object to installing
packages that come from anywhere other than the fedora-blessed yum
repository.)

(Translate to Ubuntu/Debian too.)

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