12 How Package Installation and Distribution Works

▼ |  | Package Management in Racket

1 | Getting Started with Packages
2 | Package Concepts
3 | Using raco pkg
4 | Package Metadata
5 | Source, Binary, and Built Packages
6 | Developing Packages with Git
7 | Package APIs
8 | Package Catalog Protocol
9 | PLane T Compatibility
10 | FAQ
11 | Future Plans
12 | How Package Installation and Distribution Works

► | 12 | How Package Installation and Distribution Works

12.1 | Relative References
12.2 | Separate Documentation Rendering
12.3 | Cross-Document HTML References
12.4 | HTML Documentation Searching and Start Page

On this page:

12.1`` Relative References
12.2`` Separate Documentation Rendering
12.3`` Cross-Document HTML References
12.4`` HTML Documentation Searching and Start Page

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### 12`` How Package Installation and Distribution Works🔗ℹ

The package manager builds on three main pieces of infrastructure:

- Collection links files as supported by the Racket runtime system.

  Installation of a package installs collection links, so the package’s collections can be found to compile and load modules that use the package’s modules.

  If you use raco link -l to view installed links, you will see links that were put in place by the package system. Obviously, you should not directly modify those links.

- The raco setup tool for building installed collections, including their documentation.

  The raco setup tool drives raco make to compile Racket sources to bytecode form. Recompilation is determined by changes to file timestamps, SHA-1 hashes, and dependencies recorded in "dep" files.

  Since package installations are reflected as collection links, raco setup operations on collections implicitly handle packages. The raco setup tool is “aware” of packages to only a limited extent: it uses functions like path->pkg to print progress information in terms of packages, and it uses similar package-inspection functions to connect modules to package and check actual dependencies against declared package dependencies.

- The racket-index package, which extends raco setup to drive Scribble for collection-based documentation.

  The racket-index package implements the documentation-rendering analogue of raco make, detecting changes in documentation declarations and re-rendering documents as needed to pick up cross-reference changes. The racket-index package also implements special documents for the entry point to HTML-rendered documentation (i.e., the listing of all installed documentation), the HTML search page, the local-redirection page (which server-search links to locally installed files), and so on.

Each of the three levels accommodate the user and installation package scopes, where the details in each case often differ between the scopes. Generally, references in the installation scope must be implemented as relative, so that an in-place installing of Racket can be moved to a different location. References in the user scope, meanwhile, may refer directly to the installation at some level; most references are collection-relative or installation-relative, so package content can be built in user scope and then assembled into a built package or binary package for installation elsewhere.

#### 12.1`` Relative References🔗ℹ

Functions like path->collects-relative and path->main-collects-relative are used to serialize paths into relative form, and then the paths can be deserialized with functions like collects-relative->path and main-collects-relative->path. The make-path->relative-string function generalizes support for such serialization and deserialization relative to a given set of directories.

Dependencies in a raco make-generated ".dep" file use collection-relative paths whenever possible, and it should always be possible for dependencies within a collection. Similarly, cross-reference information for documentation uses collection-relative paths when possible.

In a collection links file, paths are relative to the link file’s directory. Installation-wide links then work when an in-place installation is moved.

In cross-reference information for documentation that installation-wide, paths can be stored relative to the installation’s "doc" directory. For documentation that is built in user scope, cross-reference information within the built document is recorded relative to the document’s directory via the root-path initialization argument to render%; the cross-reference information can be unpacked to a different destination, where the use-time path is provided the #:root argument to load-xref and/or make-data+root structures.

#### 12.2`` Separate Documentation Rendering🔗ℹ

Unlike module references, which must create no reference cycles, documentation can have reference cycles. Documentation also tends to be less compact than code, and while we attempt to minimize module dependencies in code, documentation should freely reference any other documentation that is relevant. Finally, documentation references are less static than module references; for example, a document references cons by referring to racket/base, and the documentation system must figure out which other document defines cons. A naive implementation of documentation rendering would load all documents to render any one document, which is prohibitively expensive in both time and space.

Scribble supports separate document rendering by marshaling and unmarshaling cross-reference information. The racket-index extension of raco setup stores a document’s information in ".sxref" files. Some documents, such as the reference, export a large volume of cross-reference information, so raco setup breaks up a document’s exported cross-reference information into multiple "out‹n›.sxref" files. Information about “imported” cross-reference information—that is, the cross references that were used the last time a document was built—is kept in "in.sxref" files. Finally, to detect which "out‹n›.sxref" files need to be loaded while building a document, a mapping of cross-reference keys to "out‹n›.sxref" files is kept in a SQLite database, "docindex.sqlite". Lazy loading of "out‹n›.sxref" files is implemented though the #:demand-source argument to load-xref, providing a function that consults "docindex.sqlite" to map a key to a cross-reference file.

Various kinds of paths within cross-reference files are stored with various relative-path conventions. The "docindex.sqlite" file in an installation can be moved unmodified with the installation. The "docindex.sqlite" file for user-scoped packages is non-portable (and outside any package), while the "in.sxref" and "out‹n›.sxref" files can be included as-is in a binary package or built package.

#### 12.3`` Cross-Document HTML References🔗ℹ

The HTML generated for a Scribble document needs relative links. Unlike data that is unmarshaled by Racket code, however, there is no way to turn paths that are relative to various installation directories into paths that a browser understands—at least, not using only HTML. Generated HTML for documentation therefore relies on JavaScript to rewrite certain references, with a fallback path through a server to make documentation also work as plain HTML.

References within a single document are rendered as relative links in HTML. A reference from one document to another is rendered as a query to, say, http://docs.racket-lang.org/. However, every document also references "local-redirect.js" and (in the case of documentation for user-specific collections) "local-user-redirect.js". Those fragments of JavaScript dynamically rewrite query references to direct filesystem references—to installation-wide and user-specific targets, respectively—when local targets are available. When local targets are not available, the query link is left unmodified to go through a server.

The "local-redirect.js" and "local-user-redirect.js" files map documentation-directory names to specific paths. Most query references contain a documentation-directory name and a relative path within the directory, in which case the mapping from directory names to paths is sufficient. Indirect links, such as those created by (seclink #:indirect? #t ...), embed a cross-reference key, and so "local-redirect.js" and "local-user-redirect.js" must also embed a part of the cross-reference database. (This copy of the database is broken into multiple files, each of which is loaded on demand.) The "local-redirect.js" and "local-user-redirect.js" files are generated as part of the special "local-redirect" document that is implemented by the racket-index package.

The indirection through "local-redirect.js" and "local-user-redirect.js" reduces the problem of relative links to the problem of referencing those two files. They are referenced as absolute paths in a user-specific document build. To create a built package or binary package that includes documentation, each ".html" file must be modified to remove the absolute paths, and then each ".html" file must be modified again on installation to put the target installation’s paths in path.

The racket-index package’s extension of raco setup to build Scribble documentation puts these indirections in place using the set-external-tag-path method of render-mixin from scribble/html-render. The http://docs.racket-lang.org/ path is not hardwired, but instead based on the installation’s configuration as reported by get-doc-search-url. That configuration, in turn, can be determined when building a Racket distribution; the main distributions from PLT set the URL to a version-specific site, so that searches work even after new Racket versions are released, while snapshots similarly set the URL to a snapshot-specific site.

#### 12.4`` HTML Documentation Searching and Start Page🔗ℹ

The racket-index package provides a special document to implement the initial page for installed HTML documentation. The document uses "info.rkt"-file scribblings flags to depend on all documents for their titles.

The racket-index package also provides a special document to implement searching. The search document uses JavaScript and a copy of the cross-reference database (similar to "local-redirect.js") to implement interactive searching.

If any user-specific collections have been installed, then racket-index generates two copies of the start and search documents: one for the installation, and one specific to the user. The user pages are an extension of the installation pages. The user-specific search page reads the installation-wide search page’s database, which both avoids duplication and allows the search to pick up any additions to the installation without requiring a rebuild of the user-specific search page. The user-specific start page, in contrast, must be rebuilt after any installation-wide additions to pick up the additions.

When DrRacket or raco docs opens documentation in a browser, it opens the user-specific start or search page, if it exists. If those pages are visited for any reason, browser local storage or (if local storage is not supported) a cookie is installed. The local-storage key or cookie is named “PLT_Root.‹version›,” it points to the location of the user-specific documentation. Thereafter, using the local value of cookie, searching in any documentation page or going to the “top” page goes to the user-specific page, even from an installation-wide page.

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