On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 7:04 PM, Matthew Flatt <mfl...@cs.utah.edu> wrote: > At Thu, 27 Jun 2013 18:28:50 -0400, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote: >> As part of making the "core" of Racket smaller, I'd like to propose >> separating out part of the package system implementation. In >> particular, I'd like to make the core portion of the package >> collection not use the network. > > That's a different direction than I had imagined. > > I imagine that (in the future) people will clone just the core repo, > build, and then use `raco pkg install' to install packages from other > servers --- probably pre-built packages by default, but optionally (and > more likely for a non-release version) from a source catalog server > that points to GitHub repositories. > > More generally, the network seems to me the main way to get packages. > The way that our repository's makefile sets up links (and therefore > doesn't need the network) or otherwise locally constructs packages > seems in contrast, like a relatively unusual way to install packages.
Ok, that clarifies things for me. I had imagined that the process would involve keeping something like the now-current build system around, but with fewer packages in the default repository, and some packages referenced via git submodules. However, I think what you propose sounds simpler and nicer, and it's definitely worth keeping `net/url` in the core to support that. I'll pursue the extensibility part separately, but probably not immediately. Sam _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
