# Description of Racket Distribution for download and package repo pages?

**URL:** <https://racket.discourse.group/t/description-of-racket-distribution-for-download-and-package-repo-pages/1608>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [January 2, 2023, 5:44pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/description-of-racket-distribution-for-download-and-package-repo-pages/1608 "2023-01-02T17:44:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 18

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**Author:** ![alexh](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/alexh/32/315_2.png) [@alexh](https://racket.discourse.group/u/alexh)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2023, 11:41pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/description-of-racket-distribution-for-download-and-package-repo-pages/1608/18 "2023-01-06T23:41:25Z")

</div>

> [@spdegabrielle](#):
>
> > [@alexh](#):
> >
> > Minimal Racket is a tool for the maintainers and developers of Racket itself.
> 
> Is it possible to ask homebrew and others to remove minimal racket?

Perhaps I should clarify that I didn't advocate removal of Minimal Racket from anywhere in my previous post.

Minimal Racket from homebrew is still useful: someone who wants to contribute to a package from the main distribution can install Minimal Racket from any source that they want, then setup the development environment for the package they want to contribute to, next they can test the package before submitting the PR.

To make the discussion more concrete, here is how one would setup an environment to work on the plot package (based on commands from the plot CI steps: [https://github.com/racket/plot/blob/master/.github/workflows/ci.yml](https://github.com/racket/plot/blob/master/.github/workflows/ci.yml)):

- Install Minimal Racket from your favorite source
- Clone the plot repository
- Setup a local catalog for plot, which takes precedence over then main catalog:

```scheme
racket -l- pkg/dirs-catalog --link catalog .
echo "file://`pwd`/catalog" > catalogs.txt
raco pkg config catalogs >> catalogs.txt
raco pkg config --set catalogs `cat catalogs.txt`
raco pkg config catalogs

```

- Install the plot package -- this will install plot from the local checkout, and all other packages from the main catalog:

```scheme
raco pkg install --batch --auto plot

```

With this setup, changes can be made to the plot package, tested and submitted as a PR. Of course, this works for any package, not just `plot`.

Alex.

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