Retiring unstable

posted by Vincent St-Amour

Some of you may be familiar with the unstable collection, whose purpose was to serve as a staging ground for new APIs that hadn’t yet found a more permanent home. With the advent of the package system, packages can serve that same purpose, which removes the need for a dedicated unstable collection provided by the main distribution.

For this reason we are moving unstable-* packages out of the main distribution.

For backwards compatibility, the packages remain available from the package catalog. Packages that properly list their dependencies (as they should! it’s an error not to!) are unaffected by this change. Packages that are missing dependencies may need to be adjusted to include the appropriate unstable dependencies.

The unstable packages contained many useful functions and APIs, and we merged many of them into established Racket libraries. Others were spun off as their own packages. The remaining APIs, which we judged too narrow or too immature, we left in unstable packages, where they are still available in their original form. In all cases, the original unstable libraries continue to export the same bindings they always did, to ensure backwards compatibility.

For completeness, here is a list of the fate of each unstable library that used to be part of the main distribution.

• unstable/2d
  • Moved to the 2d package.
• unstable/arrow
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/automata
  • Moved to the automata package.
• unstable/bytes
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/class-iop
  • Moved to the class-iop package.
• unstable/contract

  • Moved non-empty-string? to racket/string.

  • Moved port-number? and tcp-listen-port? to racket/tcp, the latter renamed to listen-port-number?.

  • Moved if/c, failure-result/c, predicate/c and rename-contract to racket/contract.

  • Moved treeof to plot/utils.

  • Moved sequence/c to racket/sequence.

  • Left path-piece?, maybe/c, truth/c in unstable-contract-lib.

• unstable/custom-write

  • Moved make-constructor-style-printer to racket/struct.

  • Left prop:auto-custom-write in unstable-lib.

• unstable/debug
  • Left in unstable-debug-lib.
• unstable/define
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/error
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/find
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/flonum
  • Superseded by math/flonum. Left in unstable-flonum-lib.
• unstable/function
  • Merged with racket/function.
• unstable/future
  • Merged with racket/future.
• unstable/gui/notify
  • Moved to framework/notify, with naming changes.
• unstable/gui/pict

  • Moved color/c, light, dark, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, gray, white, cyan, and magenta to pict/color.

  • Moved show, hide, pict-if, pict-cond, and pict-case to pict/conditional.

  • Merged scale-to with pict’s scale-to-fit.

  • Merged ellipse/border, circle/border, rectangle/border, rounded-rectangle/border with pict’s ellipse, circle, rectangle, and rounded-rectangle, respectively.

  • Merged pin-label-line, pin-arrow-label-line, and pin-arrows-label-line with pict’s pin-line, pin-arrow-line, and pin-arrows-line, respectively.

  • Moved blur, shadow, and shadow-frame to pict/shadow.

  • Moved unstable/gui/pict/align to ppict/align, in the ppict package.

  • Left color, pict-match, pict-combine, with-pict-combine, fill, strike, shade, blur-bitmap!, arch, draw-pict-centered, backdrop, cross-out, and make-plt-title-background in unstable-lib.

• unstable/gui/ppict
  • Moved to the ppict package.
• unstable/gui/prefs
  • Moved to framework/preferences, with naming changes.
• unstable/gui/redex
  • Left in unstable-redex.
• unstable/gui/scribble
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/gui/slideshow

  • Moved with-size, with-scale, big, small, with-font, with-style, bold, italic, subscript, superscript, caps, and blank-line to slideshow/text.

  • Moved slide/staged, staged, stage, stage-name, at, before, after, before/at, after/at to the staged-slide package.

  • Left column, columns, column-size, two-columns, mini-slide, tabular, reveal, revealing-slide, and items-slide in unstable-lib.

• unstable/gui/snip
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/hash
  • Merged with racket/hash.
• unstable/latent-contract
  • Left in unstable-latent-contract-lib.
• unstable/lazy-require

  • lazy-require has been in racket/lazy-require for some time.

  • Left begin-on-demand in unstable-lib.

• unstable/list

  • Moved check-duplicates, remf, remf*, group-by, cartesian-product, list-update, and list-set to racket/list. * Moved list-prefix?, take-common-prefix, drop-common-prefix, and split-common-prefix to racket/list, with slight API changes to harmonize with Racket’s list API.

  • Left filter-multiple, extend, map/values, and map2 in unstable-list-lib.

• unstable/logging

  • Moved with-intercepted-logging and with-logging-to-port to racket/logging.

  • Left start-recording and stop-recording in unstable-lib.

• unstable/macro-testing
  • Moved to syntax/macro-testing.
• unstable/markparam
  • Moved to the markparam package.
• unstable/open-place
  • Moved open-place to racket/place, and renamed it place/context.
• unstable/options
  • Moved to the option-contract package.
• unstable/parameter-group
  • Moved to the parameter-group package.
• unstable/pretty

  • Merged pretty-format/write, pretty-format/display, and pretty-format/print with racket/pretty’s pretty-format.

  • Left break-lines in unstable-pretty-lib.

• unstable/recontract
  • Merged with racket/contract some time ago.
• unstable/sandbox
  • Merged with scribble/eval.
• unstable/sequence

  • Moved in-syntax and in-slice to racket/sequence.

  • Left in-pairs, in-sequence-forever, and sequence-lift in unstable-lib.

• unstable/socket
  • Moved to the unix-socket package.
• unstable/string
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/struct

  • Moved struct->list to racket/struct.

  • Left make in unstable-lib.

• unstable/syntax

  • Moved make-variable-like-transformer to syntax/transformer.

  • Moved syntax-source-directory and syntax-source-file-name to syntax/location.

  • Left explode-module-path-index, phase-of-enclosing-module, format-unique-id, syntax-length, and syntax-within? in unstable/syntax.

• unstable/temp-c
  • Moved to the temp-c package.
• unstable/time
  • Left in unstable-lib.
• unstable/wrapc
  • Moved to syntax/contract.

Hi, it’s my first day with Racket. Attempting to install the pict3d library is failing in a way that mentions not finding unstable/custom-write.

I’m guessing this probably relates to the reorganization mentioned above.

Any tips? Thanks!

— Corporate Sheep, 27 November 2015