[erlang-questions] Reltool anyone?

[Fred Hebert]

On 08/19, Minin Maxim wrote:
> Hi All,
> I also have a question to reltool.  Is it possible to generate boot file, which load all application but don't start them?

That can generally be done with all release tools by specifyign the app
as 'load' for its supervision strategy. For example, in Reltool this would be:

    {sys, [
        {lib_dirs, ["some/path"]},
        {rel, "my-release", "1.0.0",
        [kernel,
         stdlib,
         {app1, permanent},
         {app2, load}
         ...
    ]},
    ...

In this one, app1 is to be started as a permanent application, while
app2 will just be loaded.

Relx supports the same. From their wiki:

    {release, {sexpr, "0.0.2"},
     [sexpr,
      "erlware_commons>=0.8.1",
      {neotoma, load}]}.

The neotoma app will be loaded but not booted.

I however have doubts on the validity of wanting to do that for *all*
applications. What's the main objective there? If the idea is just to
have the applications be visible in your path so they're always around,
you may also try playing with the ERL_LIBS environment variable. You
point it to a directory containing OTP applications and the VM will pick
them up.

Regards,
Fred.