Starting Erlang

[Thomas Lindgren]

>> Please please please make .ear be a standard (e.g. POSIX) archive
>> format, usable by standard tools (e.g. tar/cpio/pax).
>> The world doesn't need Yet Another Pointless Archive Format(TM).
>>
>> /Mikael
>
>  Ummm - It's not clear to me the advantages of following a standard
>format outweigh the advantages of using a non-standard format....
>
>  Since I expect an Erlang program to produce the YAPAF file and
>another Erlang program to consume the YAPAF I don't see why it matters
>what the format is. A symmetric pair of term_to_binary and
>binary_to_term calls is all that is needed - not exactly complex code.

If there is any interest, I have not one but two .ear formats with
encoder/decoders :-) Yes, they are YAPAFs, but straightforward ones.(On the
bright side, I have archived and installed the entire OTP .beam collection
with both. On Solaris and Linux.)

The main advantage of doing it in Erlang is portability, hence availability.
(This doesn't argue for a YAPAF, of course, since we could implement some
well-known format in Erlang.) We can use the same code on Windows and
VxWorks as on various Unices. (Using a YAPAF, we also get the double-edged
sword of flexibility :-)

-- Thomas