[racket] Planet2 questions

In my experience Planet 1 makes introducing a new version enough of an
effort that you're not inclined to do it casually. As a result,
there's a tendency for changes to accumulate on (say) GitHub, before
getting rolled up into a Planet update. At least that's what I found
myself doing.

With the new package manager and PNR (a.k.a.
that-which-shall-not-be-named-Planet-2 ;)), the default/easy path is
to not to have any versions at all. Users will get the latest GitHub
version, warts and all.  (Although, they'll get them IFF they
deliberately run `raco pkg update`.  But I do realize you may also be
thinking of scenarios like populating a new server using the pkg mgr,
and that's different.)

With the new pkg mgr and PNR I understand it's possible to do
versions, in the sense of "big" versions like 2.0 or even 1.1. I'm not
sure if this is more work than with Planet 1, or about the same,
because I haven't tried it yet.


To share an idea that's less about technology and more about people:
Perhaps absence of versions is a signal (much like absence of Scribble
documentation) about the level of commitment of a developer toward a
package. Maybe that's information we need to take into account, when
we decide whether and how to rely on a package?

I definitely don't mean that in a judgmental way: If someone wants to
share some code in a more casual or "for-example" fashion, that's
wonderful and shouldn't be looked down on. If as a user I was hoping
for something "more dedicated" than that, that's OK, too.  After all,
most of these packages are fork-able. So if I find something cool but
don't get the commitment vibe I prefer, I _could_ fork it and manage
the updating myself, with the level of care that I need/want for
whatever project in which I'm using it?


On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Berthold Bäuml <berthold.baeuml at dlr.de> wrote:
>
>>
>>> on top of such a low level system one can add more convenient interfaces for users for the more standard use cases, e.g., mimicking the  version disregarding behavior of planet2 -- but it is not possible to do it the other way round.
>>
>>
>> Are you sure? You can add commands to raco, e.g., neckermann. Let's say that this meaningless name means "packages with versioning enforced". Don't you think you would be able to re-surrect the relevant parts of planet1 with
>>
>> raco neckermann install catalog 1.7.8
>>
>> reaching out to raco pkg? -- Matthias
>
> I think it is not about adding commands to raco but, as you also mentioned, about having a back-end with the information planet1 can provide but planet2 does not. I always thought Jay is saying that planet2 will be the only base for a coming higher level functionality but that planet1 will be deprecated (or only be kept for compatibility).
>
> Berthold
>
>
> --
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> DLR, Robotics and Mechatronics Center (RMC)
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