20 Compilation and Configuration

So far in this guide, we have mainly discussed DrRacket and racket (and gracket). The main additional executable is raco, which is short for “Racket command.” The raco program provides a command-line interface to many additional tools for compiling Racket programs and maintaining a Racket installation.

• raco make compiles Racket source to bytecode.

  For example, if you have a program "take-over-world.rkt" and you’d like to compile it to bytecode, along with all of its dependencies, so that it loads more quickly, then run

    raco make take-over-the-world.rkt

  The bytecode file is written as "take-over-the-world_rkt.zo" in a "compiled" subdirectory; ".zo" is the file suffix for a bytecode file.

• raco setup manages a Racket installation, including manually installed packages.

  For example, if you create your own library collection called "take-over", and you’d like to build all bytecode and documentation for the collection, then run

    raco setup -l take-over

• raco planet manages packages that are normally downloaded automatically, on demand.

  For example, if you’d like to see a list of PLaneT packages that are currently installed, then run

    raco planet show

For more information on raco, see raco: Racket Command-Line Tools.