[erlang-questions] Why do we need modules at all?

[Tim Watson]

I'd like to propose a "step in the right direction", which won't go
the whole hog in terms of what Joe is proposing, but would certainly
move us in (what IMHO is) a good direction and potentially towards
Joe's vision if he wants to go that far. I know it isn't the whole
hog, but maybe it's a useful increment towards where we'd like to be.

Why don't we start by building a search engine for finding Erlang
"stuff" such as OTP applications/libraries, modules and functions.

I would propose that we allow users to search for things by

- kind (e.g., process/gen_thing, modules, functions, whole applications)
- category (set of arbitrary tags?)
- type signature (i.e., spec)

I'm guessing this will require patching the compiler to preserve the
type specs in the beam code. That is something I would need help with,
but may be trivial for others.

The other things I think you might want are (in no particular order):

1. binary (code) artefact repository (presumably with a REST/web interface?)
2. an means of uploading artefacts (tarballs? .ez archives?) to the repository
3. library code for introspecting module metadata (e.g., pulling type
specs from beam code)
4. some means of annotating packages/modules/functions with metadata
outside of the beam code
5. search (indexing, etc) capabilities
6. a way to obtain the *things* that you've identified as being useful to you

Not everything will need to be built from scratch. Binary (code)
artefact repositories already exist (to some extent) in the form of
CEAN (which has version 2.0 coming out soon IIRC) and the Erlware
repository. Those tools may not be immediately fit for re-use as they
come with baggage, but they may be a good base upon which to build
something for starters.

Other things/ideas might be:

- Integration with build tools (such as rebar) would be useful.
- Integration with existing search/package-mgmt tools such as agner

You could easily write a plugin that uses epm/agner/sutro to search
github for something that isn't in the repo, pulls it, builds it and
adds it. So many possibilities.

I do have other projects on the go, and a job, a family and even a
social life! Nonetheless, I would be happy to contribute to an
initiative such as this (or something similarly incremental).


On 24 May 2011 19:16, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Tom Murphy <amindfv@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>> On 5/24/11, Parnell Springmeyer <ixmatus@REDACTED> wrote:
>> > In practice though, I would really hate maintaining the metadata for
>> > every function I've wrote! I much rather group common functions into a
>> > module and then annotate the module with metadata.
>>
>> Ideally, it wouldn't just be just you maintaining the metadata - if
>> the functions were in the centralized DB, others could suggest or make
>> changes, wikipedia-style.
>
> This did occur to me - the wikipedia allows large numbers of people
> to make small contributions. Think of what I want as a wiki where each
> entry is a single erlang function.
>
>
>
>>
>> Tom
>> _______________________________________________
>> erlang-questions mailing list
>> erlang-questions@REDACTED
>> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
>