[erlang-questions] reltool vs non-numeric app version numbers

[Magnus Henoch]

Hi all,

I was trying to understand why reltool rejected my application with
"Missing application directory", and eventually came to the conclusion
that reltool doesn't like application directories whose version
components contain letters.  My application uses rebar's {vsn, git}
feature in its app.src file, and thus ends up with a 6-digit hexadecimal
number as its version number.

I can generate my release in my working directory, where the application
is in a directory with a version-less name.  If I install my application
into /usr/lib/erlang/lib, and give it a name like "foo-42.0", then
reltool finds it.  Also, if I put a 'lib_dir' option in the 'app' tuple
in reltool.config, then reltool accepts the directory no matter what
it's called.  In all of these cases, the code server can find the
application if I set ERL_LIBS to the parent directory, so reltool has a
stricter criterion.

I suspect this happens because of the predicate in
reltool_utils:split_app_name, but I haven't been able to confirm that;
will do more testing tomorrow.  Is this a bug or a feature?

Regards,
Magnus