[erlang-questions] Release upgrades anyone?

[Tobias Schlager]

Hi all,

I'm currently trying to generate an upgrade for a new software release based on a recent OTP release. The release to update from is based on OTP-R16B01, the target release is based on OTP-R16B02. I don't want to update only my apps but also the standard apps. Unfortunately, I found that the vast majority of standard OTP appup files is simply unmaintained. Most of them are totally out of date concerning the update/downgrade clauses, e.g. you can't even go from mnesia 4.9 to 4.10 (although its a simple restart_application advice when looking at the past advices). Some others appup files can't even be parsed.

I know that upgrading to a new stdlib or kernel does require an emulator restart anyways, but currently I can't even generate an update for this case (at least when using systools). For me, this means I can't generate individual updates for OTP application's containing serious bugfixes or improvements, e.g. stay with the R16B01 base and only update the mnesia application to it's R16B02 version.

Is anybody else using release updates this way? I'm currently preparing a set of pull requests addressing this issue. Maybe I've just misunderstood how upgrades are supposed to work. If I'm just doing it wrong, please point me to the right direction.

Regards
Tobias