[racket] Current advice on making a 'script'

Jay, hello.

> On 2015 Jan 14, at 13:41, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 1. Create a directory where the files will go: $ROOT
> 
> I do this anyways, because everything is in git somewhere.
> 
> 2. Make prog.sh in $ROOT that looks like this:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> 
> cd $(dirname $(grealpath $0))
> racket -t prog.rkt
> 
> 3. Link $ROOT/prog.sh into my ~/bin as 'prog'

Sure -- that's what I was thinking of when saying 'installed a bunch of files in a directory tree along with a launch script' (and using exec, of course).

But the problem with that is that it's inherently a rather more ...floppy object.  My 'make install' actions would probably do something like install the various .rkt files into ~/local/bin/prog.contents/ and make the link from ~/local/bin/prog -> ~/local/bin/prog.contents/launch-prog.sh.  But one doesn't typically expect a script to have a directory attached to it (ie, this smells non-standard, and there isn't really a standard place for such a prog.contents/ directory to go), and it means that if I blow away ~/local/bin/prog I have to remember to delete prog.contents, too.

Also if, in this scenario, I delete $ROOT because I think it's redundant and I've forgotten about the link, then ~/local/bin/prog has broken without me realising it.

Having ~/local/bin/prog link to the live checked-out files means that I can't hack away at those and be sure that the 'stable' version in ~/local/bin/prog is still working.

None of the above are grievous problems -- I could live with all of them -- but they're less neat than 'here is a script file; put it somewhere in your path'.

Perhaps the concatenate-with-rewriting is the best solution here, after all.

All the best,

Norman

-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK