[erlang-questions] Erlang package manager

[Tuncer Ayaz]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 8:00 PM, Loic Hoguin wrote:
> On 01/03/2015 07:47 PM, Tristan Sloughter wrote:
> >
> >     Well, I know this is a pet peeve for you =)
> >
> > Yea, I hope this project does not care about any of that. I don't
> > think the VM start time matters even in a build tool and that is
> > run much more often than a package manager! I'd be surprised if
> > anyone even notices... Focusing on that 200ms would be a far
> > greater waste of time than any time lost on start time.
>
>
> If it was extra work, then yes. But here it's just a matter of
> choosing between 2 different ways of running programs, and they both
> *already exist*. There's no extra work involved. I just want to make
> sure the right one is chosen.

Just to be clear, running compile:file via erlc isn't magically
quicker to start just because erlc is a native executable. What makes
it quicker is that the VM is started differently compared to invoking
"erl -eval". erlc also spawns the VM, just differently.

With that being said, I agree with Loic that for interactive tools it
makes a difference, and we should aim to get escript startup time back
to R13 levels. If that's hard to achieve, Loic's suggestion of
packaging epam/gears/erlpm like erlc may be the right option.