[erlang-patches] .app and .appup files for erl_interface and jinterface applications (amended)

[Tuncer Ayaz]

On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:37:12 +0100, Siri Hansen wrote:

> Hi

Thanks for the quick response.

> 2013/3/26 Tuncer Ayaz
>
>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Fredrik wrote:
>>
>> > Since we are on the subject,
>> > We have a ticket about this but we were planning to solve this
>> > matter in reltool, i.e without adding the .app file in the
>> > applications that are missing them.
>>
>>
> Just to be clear, this ticket is about allowing reltool to include
> non-erlang applications, like erl_interface and jinterface. I
> assumed that Alisdair's patch was about this - if not, please let me
> know.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, looks like I did interpret Fredrik's
mail the wrong way. With that said my questions are irrelevant.

>> How exactly?
>
>
> Well, this isn't really decided yet, but a fair guess should be to
> allow directories in lib_dirs, that do not contain a sub-directory
> named ebin, to be seen as application directories. Possibly with the
> aid of some configuration option to reltool.

I wouldn't make it fully automatic but require specifying that for
example jinterface is of type 'non_erlang' in the reltool spec.

>> Do you plan for reltool to derive app name and version from the
>> directory name
>
> and the modules from ebin/*.beam?
>
>
> That is already the case when no .app file is found. However, the
> cases I talk about here are mainly when there are no beam files -
> i.e. non-erlang applications.
>
>
>> Can that cover scenarios like an application requiring mnesia?
>
>
> Not sure if I understand what you mean... If you need to specify
> dependencies like the 'applications' entry in the .app file you
> still need to provide the .app file.

Exactly.

>> What about application environment variables?
>>
>
> Only needed if you write an erlang application, and then you should
> still add your .app file.
>
>> Does anyone have a good guess why projects skip writing/generating
>> the .app file?
>
> Not in general, but for the cases of erl_interface and jinterface it
> is because these are non-erlang applications so the .app file would
> never be used.

This sounds reasonable for non-Erlang projects.