The .zo and .dep files should be invisible to the user

[spdegabrielle]

The .zo and .dep files should be invisible to the user They should be created, deleted, invalidated, and processed generally without needing to form part of the user's mental model or workflow. Look at how python does this. It'd be lovely to make explicit calls to raco make (or even raco setup??) unnecessary. @tonyg

[mflatt]

The rhombus executable automatically caches compilation by default, like using -y with racket. There's one significant drawback, which is that startup time can be significantly slower, so -u is available to turn that off. (Or use racket as a lower-level mechanism to start a program.)

[tonyg]

Does it also ignore cached artifacts that are incompatible with the current needs of the system? That's, I think, my main point of discomfort with the Racket .zo/.dep system these days: sometimes it gets confused by compiler outputs from a previous iteration of the system and stops rather than blowing them away or ignoring them.

[mflatt]

@tonyg I'm not sure what you have in mind. What would be an example of that happening?