Re: Libraries at scheme.org? Vladimir Nikishkin 27 Jan 2021 01:34 UTC

Another problem with packages, that Scheme is not yet facing, but which
it may actually face in the future, is that Linux distributions tend to
package individual libraries into their own package repositories, rather
than relying on language distributions' package repositories.

On 27/01/2021 06:49, Lassi Kortela wrote:
> It would be a good time to start experimenting with the grand unified
> index of Scheme libraries/packages. It'll be a long project, so best get
> going early.
>
> First off, should that be library or package?
>
> lib.scheme.org
> libs.scheme.org
>
> pkg.scheme.org
> pkgs.scheme.org
>
> Most languages have a _package_ manager, where a package is a collection
> of libraries (+ some auxiliary files). I don't know about others, but
> I've always found this two-layer approach confusing.
>
> R6RS and R7RS only talk about libraries, which are a logical and easily
> understood unit that ties neatly into the language semantics. By
> contrast, a collection of libraries is an administrative concern. If I
> want to import library (foo bar baz), do I really need to know which
> collection it comes from? If the library comes from a particular git
> repo or tar file, can't the package manager find that collection for me
> and figure out how to extract the library that I want (as well as any
> other libraries that it depends on).
>
> Package managers need to do dependency-chasing anyway in order to
> resolve packages that depend on other packages. It shouldn't be more
> work to do that on a library level as opposed to a package level.