[erlang-questions] Pros and Cons OTP Release

[Tilman Holschuh]

One further slight disadvantage of using releases you cannot add as easily a new application to your release. Say you have your production system running for a while and now you want to run redbug because you found a problem. If it was not contained in your release you have to manually add it somehow.

On 2012-04-27, at 9:37 PM, Max Lapshin wrote:

> 1) ESL now distribute good and fresh erlang packages for all required
> platforms and I don't have to mess with buddy and ancient
> debian/ubuntu/... native erlang package

Yes, that's great! Thanks to ESL again! 
But when doing so you still have to deal with package dependencies (see here https://gist.github.com/2284940).

> 2) Release changes file layout. It is a problem when you develop in
> one environment and deploy in another.
> You have to deal with it and in fact there are no reasons for it.
> When file layout doesn't change, I can go to staging server, make
> there git pull and develop server there with "close to production"
> conditions. With releases it becomes a problem.

Releases allow you to put all files and applications you need in the place the way you want it. In our environment we put the same deployment mechanisms in place for test and production using releases. For development we basically differ only in arguments to the VM which you can handle well using vm.args.

Rebar makes it very easy to create releases. Thanks Basho!

Cheers
- Tilman