Longstanding issues: structs & standalone Erlang

[Robert Raschke]

This discussion is very interesting and is providing me with a lot of
insight into why a lot of SW producers and users like simple
executables (as in, compiled to run on the metal).  I have seen lots
of applications written in Java that get distributed with their own
private JRE because that is the only way the SW producer can
reasonably guarantee ongoing support.

This means that SW producers of applications written in interpreted
languages (in the widest sense) do not trust the runtime systems they
use (obviously there will be exceptions).  I would think the main
reason for this lies with the complexity of the languages involved and
the sheer size of the libraries on offer.  I personally do not trust
any JRE distribution enough to blindly assume that the next version is
going to work just fine for my app.  I would assume something similar
holds for new versions of the Erlang distro, but I haven't yet written
a real application in Erlang.

Anyway, this has veered a bit.  I think that the Erlang package at the
moment is great.  But it is also very large.  A small guide as to how
the libraries are layered (core set, extensions, whole special purpose
libs) would be a good start.  This would allow somebody like me to
feel more confident in removing parts of the library I know I will
never need.

Robby