[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?]]]

[Miles Fidelman]

Loïc Hoguin wrote:
> On 02/18/2014 04:47 PM, Garrett Smith wrote:
>> emerged as a de facto standard (i.e. actually *used* by people)
>
> This is what makes these package manager discussions so odd. People 
> keep talking about technical choices and how the perfect package 
> manager they have wet dreams about so often would look like, and 
> nobody asks the questions that matter: how do people deal with 
> dependencies today? How can we improve the workflow? Do packages need 
> to be separate (meaning you need to convince people to maintain them, 
> how?) or can the library authors do it? How do you convince library 
> authors to agree to it? Is their investment in this worth the reward?
>
> It doesn't matter what the technical solutions are until we have a 
> clearer idea of what people want and would be willing to use. All 
> package manager projects are bound to fail until these questions are 
> answered.
>

Really good points.  One nice thing about Erlang packages - we're 
talking about a single language and run-time environment, not upstream 
code that has to be packaged for every linux distribution under the sun.



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra