[erlang-questions] Automated Stripping of otp libraries / modules

[Matthias Lang]

On Monday, June 20, Dale Harvey wrote:

> Has anyone written any code that takes an application and strips the otp
> libraries to the absolute minimum amount of modules* needed to run that
> application? 

We do this in an ugly, pragmatic way.

Start the system with all modules available, run the test suite, then

  code:all_loaded()

Now you have a list of exactly what's needed. I then basically paste
that into a Makefile.

Works well for us because our system is small and test suite is large.

I realise that it won't work in general.

apply(), M:F, spawn() and hot loading make the problem impossible for
"sufficiently nasty" code. Your post has made me wonder how good the
information from xref and dialyzer (which came out after I started
doing this) would be for a real-world system.  I'll try it out on ours
and report back.

Matt