That all sounds like exactly what I had in mind, with different (pretty much better) terminology.
Carl Eastlund On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Matthew Flatt <mfl...@cs.utah.edu> wrote: > The package system has a notion of "auto" packages, which are packages > that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies. Also, `raco > pkg remove' supports an `--auto' flag for automatically removing auto > packages that have no non-auto packages depending on them. > > So, instead of adding package roots, one possibility is: > > * Make `raco pkg show' show only non-auto packages by default. > > * Change the `pkg-links' Makefile target to install only links for > packages needed by a particular package (which defaults to some sort > of "main-distribution" package), and to install links forced by > dependencies as "auto". > > The second bullet is along a direction that things are moving, anyway. > > I think there will need to be some other refinements to auto mode. For > example, if you have a package in auto mode and you try to install it, > I think you get an already-installed error and the package stays in > auto mode. But those are small changes, I think. > > Does this sound enough like what you had in mind? > > At Thu, 27 Jun 2013 12:53:59 -0400, Carl Eastlund wrote: > > I just ran "raco pkg show" on a fresh install, and its output is huge > now. > > Of course, this is inevitable when we break the distribution up into many > > packages, but it makes the tool unmanageable for routine use. I'd like > to > > propose a way around this, that would also solve some of my normal > > usability gripes with package managers. > > > > I propose we have "package roots" -- roots to the forest of package > > dependencies. These are the packages the user actually wants; every > other > > installed package is pulled in as the dependencies to support these. > Then > > "raco pkg show" can show just these packages, so in a fresh install we'd > > just see "racket" or "racket+gui" or whatever. We could add a flag to > show > > everything, when necessary. > > > > This also gives us some room to automate removal of packages the user > > doesn't need. For instance, if I install package A which depends on B, > C, > > and D, of course raco pkg install will install B, C, and D. If I remove > > package A, currently B, C, and D are going to stay unless I explicitly > > remove them, if I recall correctly. If we base our system on a set of > root > > packages, then B, C, and D would be removable as soon as A is removed, > if A > > was a root and the others were not. We could have "raco pkg remove A" > > remove them immediately, or we could have some explicit "raco pkg > cleanup" > > to remove them. Whichever way we go, we could add a flag to "raco pkg > > remove" to swap behavior. This would make cleaning up a lot easier when > a > > package has many dependencies. It would also mean upgrading a package > > whose dependencies have changed would allow the system to automatically > > clean up dependencies that aren't needed any more. > > > > I don't know how hard it would be to implement this, but I think it would > > make the package system much more usable to present 90% of the > interactions > > solely in terms of the top-level packages the user cares about, and do > all > > the cleanup of dependency packages silently in the background when > possible. > > > > Carl Eastlund > > _________________________ > > Racket Developers list: > > http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev > >
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