[erlang-questions] Erlang "jar" file?

[Kenneth Lundin]

On 11/1/07, Valentin Micic <valentin@REDACTED> wrote:
> On occasion we do on-line incremental upgrade (code purge/delete) of a
> particular module... how would this aspect work with respect to this change?
> For example, assuming that we have a module M, that has been loaded as a
> part of the archive A. Than, at the later stage, if one upgrade module M,
> well, if archive A is already "on the path", how do we avoid loading old M?
> By removing it from the archive A? That's ok, but how do we roll-back the
> changes, i.e. roll-back to the old version of M? Yes, one can extract the
> old file, than remove it, if possible... in other words, quite cumbersome.
> Then if you have two teams developing independently, both using module X,
> and both teams deciding that they'd like to put it in independent archives.
> Brrrrr... nightmare.

We are not planning to introduce the loading from archive files and other
features in the Standalone Erlang direction as changes. It will just be
additional choices which can be used for products that would benefit from being
distributed that way. I can think of many products that you can
develop with Erlang
that don't need to be upgraded during service. Just stop, replace and
restart with new version.
>
> While archive may make some tasks simpler, it might complicate others. One
> may afford some degree of complexity when the time is not an issue. However,
> when one needs to panel-beat the system to satisfy some ad-hoc tests
> (usually politically motivated), complexity is something you would try to
> avoid.
>
> V.
>
/Kenneth (Erlang/OTP team at Ericsson)