Erlang is getting too big

Joachim Durchholz joachim.durchholz@REDACTED
Thu Oct 16 19:30:02 CEST 2003


Eric Merritt wrote:
>  Why is it impossible to take something away? If you
> give ample warning, say depricating a feature two or
> three releases before it goes away, and provide a very
> clear migration path to new features it should not be
> a problem to remove features.

You also need a way to convert existing code that uses deprecated 
features. The conversion must not take more than O(1), O(log LOC) just 
might be OK, O (LOC) would be out of the question.
And it's d*mned f*cking hard to offer such a migration part. It almost 
invariably means some automatic conversion tools, and getting such 
one-shot conversion tools written, tested and debugged is one of those 
things that tend to sort-of work. (I have worked in a company where such 
things were done, though I haven't worked directly with them - but I got 
told the war stories, and the above is what the stories agreed on.)

Regards,
Jo




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