<div dir="ltr">I think we're struggling at the moment with what the predicate we want to check is, tho. (That is, I feel like we can deal with errors or alerts or whatever, once we decide what should trigger them.)<div>
<br></div><div>Robby</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Laurent <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:laurent.orseau@gmail.com" target="_blank">laurent.orseau@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Independently of how difficult it is to do this, another possibility is to ask for permission as the program is run.<br>
</div></div><div>But then you may have the problem that some users (read: students) may actually not know that they don't know what they are doing.<br>
</div><div>There could also be a checkbox somewhere to allow for unsandboxed execution inside DrRacket.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br>
</div>Laurent<br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 10:10 PM, Robby Findler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robby@eecs.northwestern.edu" target="_blank">robby@eecs.northwestern.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr">Matthew reminded me of an old thread on this topic:<div><br></div><div>
<a href="http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev/archive/2013-February/011741.html" style="font-family:monospace" target="_blank">http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev/archive/2013-February/011741.html</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>Two points worth mentioning here.</div><div><br></div><div>Ryan & John: can you use the GUI package manager to install a package instead of writing a program in the drracket window that does it, at least for now?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Jay, Sam: there is a slippery notion of exactly what amount of trust I am willing to give programs that I run in drracket that needs to be sorted out before we decide what is the right way to go for the larger question of whether or not to allow pkg installation to happen via running a drracket program.</div>
<div><br></div><div>In particular, I think it is reasonable for a user to expect that they may be doing something dangerous when they install a pkg -- they should try to figure out first if they trust that package before installing it. But maybe we want to have a lower bar for programs that we run inside DrRacket. I'm not saying that we are going to try to eliminate the (system "rm -rf /") programs, but maybe we should be trying to protect DrRacket itself from such programs. That is, I don't think we can easily describe the invariants that have to hold to avoid breaking my underlying OS when running a racket program, but maybe we can more easily describe the invariants that have to hold to avoid destroying the drracket/racket installation (without destroying the underlying OS) and maybe we should prohibit drracket programs from breaking those. And if we did that, then we'd want to say that package installation is off limits.</div>
<div><br></div><div>(And, of course, the error message should explain all this .... :)</div><span><font color="#888888"><div><br>Robby</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></font></span></div><div>
<div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Robby Findler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robby@eecs.northwestern.edu" target="_blank">robby@eecs.northwestern.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Jay and I have talked offline and apparently this is something that came up before and so I'm now back on track trying to understand and fix the underlying problem.<span><font color="#888888"><div>
<br></div><div>Robby</div><div><br>
</div></font></span></div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 1:47 PM, John Clements <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:clements@brinckerhoff.org" target="_blank">clements@brinckerhoff.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><br>
On Oct 24, 2013, at 7:28 AM, Robby Findler wrote:<br>
<br>
> This doesn't sound great. Can you explain more what you mean here about programs not being able to run in DrRacket, please?<br>
<br>
</div>+1 ... I was hoping to be able to tell Windows users to run programs like this, as opposed to using Command Prompt.exe, which is like pulling teeth ("oh ... maybe you installed DrRacket in the c:\Program Files (x86)\ folder....").<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
John<br>
<br>
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