On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:36:27PM -0800, Graydon Hoare wrote: > On 24/01/2012 12:24 PM, Thomas Leonard wrote: > > >Basically, I'd like to make a list of short-comings in existing > >installation systems that cargo addresses (e.g. poor documentation, > >too many dependencies, lack of robustness, poor security, etc). > > Summary version: too many concepts and moving parts. > > We kept degrees-of-freedom to a bare minimum with cargo, and there > are still probably too many. We might well shave more. It's > reasonable in 2012 for our compiler to support: > > use foo (url = "git://github.com/user/foo.git");
As an aside, Racket does this right now: (require (planet <module>)) will fetch and install module locally, if need be. It's certainly doable. It's not even part of the compiler in racket, since the module system is extremely powerful. > out of the box. We don't yet, but we may well do so and remove cargo > altogether. Developer machines without revision control and internet > connections in this day and age are curious paperweights. > > The number of degrees-of-freedom in 0install is much higher, as it's > trying to solve many more problems (end-user distribution, > multi-language, multi-transport, multi-vcs, source and executable, > OS-packaging, sandboxing, etc.) > > The critical thing for us to minimize is the cognitive load of > figuring out, as a developer, how to go from "my new libfoo is in a > git repo somewhere" to "you can successfully compile 'use foo' in > your application". The number of steps to achieve this in 0install > is simply too high; the publisher has too much to figure out and the > consumer does too. I have to read a number of web pages worth of > docs and flow charts, and examine a number of XML fragments to try > to figure which one I am supposed to edit (or create) to make things > go. That's too much. > > Possibly, as I say, even having the installation-step *be* a > separate tool is too much. Shaving down interaction-steps is really > important. People don't have a lot of time to learn how new systems > work. > > -Graydon > _______________________________________________ > Rust-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/rust-dev -- elly
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