Re: [Chicken-users] Wish list

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

Hi Aleksej,

On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:36:41 +0400 Aleksej Saushev <address@hidden> wrote:

> I have talked to a user, and he reminded me of my past experience of
> using Chicken in production environment around four years ago. While
> many things improved since then, there're still some I'd like to have.
>
> 1. Distribute eggs by HTTP(S) and/or FTP(S).
>
> Today I have "chicken-install -r", but it still is a specialized client.
> I don't quite understand what I can do if I'm in mildly hostile network
> where automatically configured proxy requires authentication mechanism
> chicken-install doesn't support.

Most (if not all) eggs are available via HTTP(S).  For eggs hosted on
call-cc.org, you ca use
https://code.call-cc.org/svn/chicken-eggs/release/4/

The other hosts (github, bitbucket, gitorious etc) also provide HTTP(S)
access (including tarballs).


> 2. Distribute eggs as source tarballs.
>
> In addition to (1) it would be nice if eggs were distributed as tarballs
> rather than individual files. In addition, such tarballs could be
> accompanied by cryptographic hash sums (individually per egg or as big
> list for the whole repository). These tarballs could even be signed, even.

Yeah, that can be a handy feature for packagers.

Maybe that feature can be implemented via some henrietta-cache hook or
something?


> 3. Label eggs with their versions.
>
> It is unfortunate, that chicken-install still doesn't report egg version
> in any way. Did I overlook it? It would be nice, if eggs would follow
> common standard (eggname-x.y.z.tar.gz containing subdirectory eggname-x.y.z).

You can install specific egg versions by specifying them like this:
<egg>:<version>.  Example

   $ chicken-install sendfile:1.7.23

chicken-status (installed by the chicken-core) lists eggs and versions.


> 1-3 in conjunction would help paranoid people who want to track
> versioning information for various reasons (security, stability in field).
> (It would also help packagers and thus the community in whole due to
> better visibility. I hope we do agree that there're people who prefer
> using controlled installation rather than dumping random files into $PREFIX.)

I see.


> 4. Support installation of eggs into directory other than
> $(chicken-install -repository).
>
> It would be nice to be able to install eggs into private area
> (for testing purposes, for migration purposes, just as developer
> convenience, whatever).

As far as I understand what you mean, that's already supported.  See
http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Extensions#changing-repository-location


Best wishes.
Mario
-- 
http://parenteses.org/mario