[erlang-questions] using the target_system module

[Logan, Martin]

I don't actually like the target system library.  It prescribes names and such that are not exactly natural in my opinion. We wrote the Sinan build system which when combined with the faxien package manager can accomplish this same functionality in a cleaner way I think. It will also work with lower versions of Erlang though I would recommend using faxien to just install a greater version of Erlang on your system. To get the erl shell and erlc installed once you have faxien installed just run

faxien install-release erl

You can find them at erlware.org. 

-----Original Message-----
From: erlang-questions@REDACTED [mailto:erlang-questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of Pablo Platt
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 4:59 PM
To: Erlang Questions
Subject: [erlang-questions] using the target_system module

Hi,

I'm using the target_system module from http://erlang.org/doc/system_principles/create_target.html
The OTP application I'm using for tests is simpletest from http://eaglestreet.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/releasing_erlang_otp_code/

The target_system module is really good.
Is it officially supported and will be included in a future release or just an example?

I have several remarks:

1. It doesn't work with the Ubuntu Jaunty erlang package. The doc should indicate that it only works with R13B and above.
2. I had to manually change the permissions of some of the scripts under the bin directory to executable.
Is it possible that the module will take care of that?
3. It took me some time to understand that bin/start can't run without sys.config file under the releases dir.
Can bin/start throw an error if it can't find the sys.config file?
4. The module should create a log dir.
5. In my case the create method built relative path. I'm not sure if this is intended or not but it might cause issues.
6. It will be helpful to have a tar file online with a test application that works with this module for easy learning.

Thanks