On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <sa...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Robby Findler > <ro...@eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote: >> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <sa...@ccs.neu.edu> >> wrote: >>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccar...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <sa...@ccs.neu.edu> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> * I think the auto-installing module resolver mentioned in "Short >>>>> Term" is a bad idea -- it's already really easy to install packages >>>>> with this system, and auto-installation just introduces possibility >>>>> for headaches. >>>> >>>> I don't think it is *bad* idea, but I also don't think it is >>>> *necessary*. But there are other people in the Racket group who think >>>> this is totally necessary for Planet 2. I'll let them explain why. >>> >>> I'll look forward to that explanation. >> >> I think it is important that you can get a program from the web, put >> it into DrRacket, hit run, and get Something Good to happen, without >> having to go type at command lines and whatnot. (This is especially >> true for Windows, the platform something like 95% of our users use.) > > I agree entirely that we need a non-command-line way of installing > packages, and we should provide a GUI for handling that in DrRacket. > > I think that the percentage of our users that install new packages is > much less Windows-heavy than the overall user base. > > I think a system where DrRacket can, in some modes, prompt the user to > install packages would be a big improvement over automatic > installation. Right now, running a file can trigger automatic > installation of arbitrary numbers of packages, some of which then > conflict or which have errors that the user can't be expected to > understand. This is even worse when the user didn't know anything > about the packages being installed.
That's what I'm proposing as the default, btw. Jay > > Sam -- Jay McCarthy <j...@cs.byu.edu> Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay "The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93 _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev