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rakudo / rakudo.org

Code for rakudo.org website
https://rakudo.org/
Artistic License 2.0
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downplay native package manager #98

Closed librasteve closed 7 months ago

librasteve commented 7 months ago

I have adjusted the text to discourage newbies from trying their favourite platform package manager

nxadm commented 7 months ago

While I share the worries about outdated packages, I don't think that compiling the compiler --what rakubrew does-- is what programmers new to the language expect or, more importantly, will accept.

bazzaar commented 7 months ago

I agree with @nxadm, and it's a point I specifically raised in my 'more Focus' issue to the Steering Council.

https://github.com/Raku/Raku-Steering-Council/issues/56#issuecomment-1763400234

The general advice for new users to use their Linux distro's package installer is sound enough, so long as the additional step of pointing the package installer to a well-trusted repo which supplies an up-to-date version of Rakudo is taken.

nxadm's excellent rakudo-pkg repo, details all the instructions for users to add the repo to the list of package repositories on their system.

I don't see why this seems such a difficult mechanism to advertise. Other specialised software products follow such a route. Users don't want software that is 9-months out of date, so they will clamour for the repo to be added if they work for a larger organisation. Me now retired, it was a 5 minute job to add the repo in OpenSuSe Leap. Been using the rakudo-pkg service now for maybe 5years, it installs the software in /opt, and there's a script to run to set it up so that a user can install additional modules (distributions) in a user-specified directory on their $PATH. Pretty straightforward. The latest release of Rakudo is installed by the distro's package manager automatically from then on, as soon as it appears on the rakudo-pkg repo site.

I could draw an analogy with the Comma situation. An excellent 3rd party initiative, well maintained, and providing a reliable up-to-date service, yet sadly not given the backing it deserves on the Raku/Rakudo web site.

As I alluded to in the 'more Focus' thread, the Rakudo download options page is very confusing for new users, IMHO.

librasteve commented 7 months ago

@nxadm, @bazzaar - yep I agree with all that, let me try rakudo-pkg myself and then revert with a proposal @raiph - yep that's good, will adapt text to your version - thanks!

librasteve commented 7 months ago

@nxadm, @bazzaar - I just tried the instructions at https://cloudsmith.io/~nxadm-pkgs/repos/rakudo-pkg/setup/#formats-deb and the vanilla AWS ubuntu image

the curl script worked fine

BUT, there are two issues:

  1. nowhere does it say what to do after you setup the rakudo-pkg repo

  2. when I do go sudo apt-get install rakudo, I get

ubuntu@ip-172-31-31-39:~$ raku -v
Welcome to Rakudo™ v2022.02.
Implementing the Raku® Programming Language v6.d.
Built on MoarVM version 2022.02.

Please put me straight if I have misconstrued anything.

Therefore, while I agree in principle that rakudo.org should promote actively maintained repo such as rakudo-pkg, I would look to you to resolve these two issues before we move up its visibility please.

In the meantime, I will fix @raiph s comment and resubmit this PR, and move this "where to place rakudo-pkg" thread to an Issue. I have in mind that rakudo-pkg and rakubrew would have "equal billing" at the top of the Linux tab if we can get this resolved.

librasteve commented 7 months ago

moved rakudo-pakg thread to this Issue #99