Here's a rough cut at a snapshot build with the new package organization: http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/snapshots/20130702-c90365e/
While there are plenty of rough edges, enough is in place to show how I see distributions and packages working with the new organization. The snapshot page has * "Racket" installers with the usual stuff: DrRacket, HtDP support, etc. * "Minimal Racket" installers for just the core build. Each Minimal installer is configured to refer back to the snapshot site for package installations; each package that is included in the distribution is available from the snapshot site in pre-built form. (If a package is not available from the snapshot site, then a package search will continue with "pkg.racket-lang.org", etc.) For example, starting with with a Minimal installation and running `raco pkg install -i --deps search-auto gui' gets you `racket/gui' in compiled form (in about 1 minute on my machine), along with the necessary native libraries, the `gracket' launcher, documentation, and so on. [Using `-u' or `-s' doesn't yet work, because the installation-wide catalog configuration is not used as the default for `-u' or `-s'. I'll fix that.] After installing `gui', then `raco pkg install -i --deps search-auto drracket' gets you DrRacket (in about 30 seconds). [Unfortunately, the `drraccket' step also deletes some documentation that was installed by the `gui' step, so I have more work to do there, too.] I image that releases will ultimately work the same way: installers will be configured to start with a catalog server that provides pre-built packages compatible with the release --- and those packages will be the responsibility of the distribution server, not "pkg.racket-lang.org". The set of packages available in pre-built form need not be just the ones in a distribution. The choice of available pre-built packages is separate from the choice of packages into include in a distribution, so pre-built packages can be available and useful for a "Racket" installer as well as a "Minimal Racket" installer. I expect that our release and snapshot sites will provide pre-built versions of all ring-0 packages. [A piece that's missing: online documentation as a fall-back for installed documentation. For example, suppose you install "gui", search installed documentation for "WXME", go to the "WXME Decoding" section, find "htdp" on that page, and click `htdp/image'. Then, you get a link that goes back to the snapshot site (because you don't have the relevant package installed), which is as intended. But the link doesn't yet give you documentation.] I expect to make http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/snapshots/ updated daily or so with a new snapshot (and a front page that points to the latest snapshot). Each snapshot will be available for some amount of time (a week?) to serve packages before it is removed. That's not to say that "www.cs.utah.edu" will be home to the main PLT-provided snapshots, but I imagine that it will be around as an option. The process is designed to make it as easy as possible set up extra snapshot sites. _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev