AW: Hello (Erlang) World!

[Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB)]

Richard Carlsson wrote:

> Yes, build systems usually make a lot of assumptions. It would be nice
> if someone who knows Erlang build systems well and also has 
> an interest in packages (*coughulfwiger*) could present a good build
> strategy. :-)

Well, I still maintain that 'builder' is a neat idea. The thought behind
it was to build a system incrementally, and for each component you add,
you can easily build a script, or set of scripts, in order to test that
particular component together with the applications it needs. There is 
also a notion of a semi-recursive build in there, but it needs more 
work.

Apart from the required patches for systools_make, 'builder' had no 
problem with packages - the parts of the code that need to deal with
package hierarchies have been designed to do so.

In general, I think the big problem with build tools is to find a
good set of default options that suit the vast majority of people.
Almost every detail needs to be configurable, but you should be 
able to get off the ground with a minimum of fuzz. This is quite
difficult to achieve. Good documentation and tutorials help, of 
course, and 'builder' lacks those, I'm afraid.

/Uffe