[erlang-questions] What problem are we trying to solve here? [was Erland users group [was re: languages in use? [was: Time for OTP to be Renamed?]]]

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 17/02/2014, at 8:01 AM, Robert Virding wrote:

> This discussion of whether it is good or bad that Ericsson manages/releases Erlang often crops up.

For a comparison, I look at R.  It's not owned by a business,
but it _is_ managed by a core of bright dedicated people who
keep on rolling out ever-better releases.

The one thing that they have that Erlang doesn't is a *large*
repository of 3rd-party libraries.  Having a single place
to look for stuff (linked right off the main page) is good for
everyone.  (There's a single place to *look*; there are mirrors
for *downloading*, which is as simple as
	> install.packages(c("wigwam","goose","bridle"))
That will
 - fetch the latest descriptions
 - download whatever needs downloading
 - unpack whatever needs unpacking
 - compile whatever support code needs compiling
 - put everything where it can be found
 - including documentation and examples.

When we can do something like

% erl -install cowboy

won't that be nice?