[erlang-questions] Using Dialyzer on Ubuntu 9.10?

[Elliot Murphy]

2009/12/19 Kostis Sagonas <kostis@REDACTED>:
> Lovei Laszlo wrote:
>> You have a point here, but using packaged software has its own advantages
>> too, and Erlang packages in Debian are getting better and better. (Maybe
>> there will be packages built with debug_info sometime, who knows.)

Hi Lovei!

I made a PPA with the Ubuntu Erlang package rebuilt with debug info a
few minutes ago.
https://edge.launchpad.net/~erlang-dev/+archive/ppa
If you go to that page it will explain how to add the PPA to your
Ubuntu system, you should then be able to update and get a rebuilt
erlang package installed that included debug info.

I have no experience using Dialyzer myself, so I haven't confirmed
that the package works although I expect it to. If you or someone else
can confirm that the package works and actually contains the debug
info I'd appreciate that.

> In Debian yes.  In Ubuntu not.  Apparently, the Ubuntu people who decided
> distributing erlang without debug_info do not fully understand the
> consequences of their action (and their excuse is lame).  Somebody who cares
> about Ubuntu should tell them.

Wow Kostis that's a rather rude comment. What is the lame excuse that
you are talking about? From my firsthand knowledge of the situation in
both Debian and Ubuntu as it evolved (and speaking as the manager of
the dev team that petitioned to have Erlang included in the default
Ubuntu install), the Ubuntu developers do understand the consequences,
which are that building a smaller runtime made the erlang packages
small enough that we could fit them and CouchDB onto the LiveCD and
ship CouchDB installed by default for all desktop Ubuntu installs. I
realize this creates an inconvenience for Erlang developers who aren't
building Erlang from source, and just never got around to setting up
an alternate PPA. I do care about making Erlang development easy on
Ubuntu (although I am not an official Ubuntu developer), which is why
I'm working on setting up this PPA at 11:45 PM on a saturday night.

Jeremy, although I first noticed this discussion because of following
erlang-questions, I really appreciate you submitting that bug report
to Ubuntu and including all the details. I think the bug should be
closed as wontfix, and I hope the PPA that I set up helps solve the
problem. In fact, I'm open to working on getting newer releases of
Erlang into that or a similar PPA to make life even better for people
who are doing erlang development work on Ubuntu. My full response in
the bug is available here:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/erlang/+bug/498558/comments/2

-- 
Elliot Murphy | https://launchpad.net/~statik/