Longstanding issues: structs & standalone Erlang

Vlad Dumitrescu XX (LN/EAB) vlad.xx.dumitrescu@REDACTED
Tue Feb 14 10:08:58 CET 2006


Hi, 

> Yes, I think too that the SAE would contribute a lot in 
> marketing Erlang to the world.

I agree with that. OTOH, Java has the same problem. There are native
code compilers, but in most cases one relies on a preinstalled JRE. And
despite this, Java has already taken over the world (*just kidding*)

> To market Erlang better, I think we should like java have 
> both a development environment for erlang nerds and one other 
> much simplier way to install and run an erlang app. 

Just like Java has JDK (50MB) and JRE (16MB). A possible issue with
distributing even a greatly compressed runtime with each smallish
application is that it's going to be quite a lot of deadweight anyway.
Have 4-5 such smallish apps lying around and there go something like
80MB... Disk space is cheap, but not that cheap, IMHO.

I would like to have something like JavaStart. An erlmerge that would be
able to also download and install the runtime, if needed. 

Another variant would be to let code:load() access code repositories
over the net. This way one could install a really minimal runtime, and
libraries would be downloaded when used (code loader would of course
start a background download and later use the local copy).

Regards,
Vlad






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