[racket-dev] raco dwim
I'm revising my course content now, and I ran into the change that Robby committed a while ago to `raco setup' where it no longer installs plt files by default. I didn't know what would be the best thing to do with it, but I think that there's no problems keeping such instructions with setup-plt -- since the files are still .plt files. But when I was thinking about that, I reazlied that since `raco' looks for the first unambiguous prefix, it's doing a kind of a dwim search. So why not go the whole way? Running raco with some string can: * Run the specified command if there is one. * If it specifies a valid (symbolic) require, require it (as in `racket -l') -- a `foo' collection is effectively defining a `raco foo' command, and the same for `foo/bar'. * If it specifies an existing filename that looks like - *.rkt, require the file (as in `racket -u') - *.rktl, load the file (as in `racket -r') - *.plt (possibly more than one), install it [Otherwise it can look in the file for some magic header and decide what to do (#lang = require it, some future magic string for a package file = install it), but this might be a bad idea: sticking to a .suffix means that it can be made reliable if raco commands cannot use . or .suffix for the few knowns suffixes.] * If something was required (through a symbolic require path or *.rkt), and if doing so provided a `#%top-interaction' binding, then start a repl. (Or do that with a language configuration option.) ? -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] raco dwim
This seems like a coherent thing for it to do, but not something that I would personally use. I don't think I'd use it or like having it there because the more complicated the algorithm it uses to choose what to run, the more complicate the algorithm I run in my brain to predict what it will do has to be. Basically, I think I am likely to make mistakes this way. As an aside, I thought we talked about this back when 'raco' was created about whether it should also serve as 'racket'. Jay On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Eli Barzilay e...@barzilay.org wrote: I'm revising my course content now, and I ran into the change that Robby committed a while ago to `raco setup' where it no longer installs plt files by default. I didn't know what would be the best thing to do with it, but I think that there's no problems keeping such instructions with setup-plt -- since the files are still .plt files. But when I was thinking about that, I reazlied that since `raco' looks for the first unambiguous prefix, it's doing a kind of a dwim search. So why not go the whole way? Running raco with some string can: * Run the specified command if there is one. * If it specifies a valid (symbolic) require, require it (as in `racket -l') -- a `foo' collection is effectively defining a `raco foo' command, and the same for `foo/bar'. * If it specifies an existing filename that looks like - *.rkt, require the file (as in `racket -u') - *.rktl, load the file (as in `racket -r') - *.plt (possibly more than one), install it [Otherwise it can look in the file for some magic header and decide what to do (#lang = require it, some future magic string for a package file = install it), but this might be a bad idea: sticking to a .suffix means that it can be made reliable if raco commands cannot use . or .suffix for the few knowns suffixes.] * If something was required (through a symbolic require path or *.rkt), and if doing so provided a `#%top-interaction' binding, then start a repl. (Or do that with a language configuration option.) ? -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev -- Jay McCarthy j...@cs.byu.edu Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University http://teammccarthy.org/jay The glory of God is Intelligence - DC 93 _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
Re: [racket-dev] raco dwim
On Sep 10, Jay McCarthy wrote: This seems like a coherent thing for it to do, but not something that I would personally use. I don't think I'd use it or like having it there because the more complicated the algorithm it uses to choose what to run, the more complicate the algorithm I run in my brain to predict what it will do has to be. Basically, I think I am likely to make mistakes this way. (That's why I thought that looking in the contents of a suffixless file is bad.) In any case, I think that a good example here is a .plt file -- do I really have to spell things out when raco foo.plt is pretty obvious? (Also, it makes raco a replacement for setup-plt, where you can throw drag and drop a plt file into it.) As an aside, I thought we talked about this back when 'raco' was created about whether it should also serve as 'racket'. I don't remember if this direction was raised... I thought it was the other way -- I remember Matthew mentioning that `racket' has a very picky and often difficult to learn use of flag, but as a result it's very flexible. So it seems that raco is a natural fit for the other extreme -- very fixed by patterns, but much easier to remember. -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
