make it installable without having to understand the source
I wouldn't say that understanding Arc's source is a prerequisite for installation. The problem is more just that the instructions are complex [1].
It would probably help if they were updated to let people know that with arc3.1, you don't have to worry about installing version 372 of MzScheme [2]. (Unless there's some reason why you'd prefer people installed arc3.0.) Navigating their website to download the specific old version of MzScheme is especially confusing since they rebranded as Racket.
This reduces the install and run to (on Ubuntu 10.04):
$ sudo aptitude install mzscheme
$ wget http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.1.tar
$ tar -xvf arc3.1.tar
$ cd arc3.1
$ mzscheme -f as.scm
Comments
make it installable without having to understand the source
I wouldn't say that understanding Arc's source is a prerequisite for installation. The problem is more just that the instructions are complex [1].
It would probably help if they were updated to let people know that with arc3.1, you don't have to worry about installing version 372 of MzScheme [2]. (Unless there's some reason why you'd prefer people installed arc3.0.) Navigating their website to download the specific old version of MzScheme is especially confusing since they rebranded as Racket.
This reduces the install and run to (on Ubuntu 10.04):
---[1] http://arclanguage.org/install
[2] http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254