[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?]]]

[Leo Liu]

On 2014-02-17 10:07 +0800, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> 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?

You nailed it, the single most important change that would make a major
difference to erlang.

The emacs community has a similar story. Now they have three major
package archives: an official one and two provided by the community. In
under 2 years, thousands of packages appeared. Now users need not deal
with editing features or problems upfront and just package-install
solutions.

Leo