[erlang-questions] Erlang packaging (was: Un-identifiable SSL issue when upgrading from) R 15B-03 to 16A, 16B, 16B-01

[Motiejus Jakštys]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 06:39:25PM +0100, Motiejus Jakštys wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen
> <jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Motiejus Jakštys <desired.mta@REDACTED>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Can you elaborate on that? For me packages from debian experimental seem
> >> to work pretty OK, for more than two years, on many environments.
> >>
> >> If there are concrete issues, they could be addressed IMO.
> >
> >
> > Two ways in which they are horribly broken:
> >
> > 1. They split up the OTP release into different parts. For instance, you
> > need erlang-crypto in order to get the crypto application. It is not
> > installed by default. Usually this leads to poor newbie users asking why
> > they can't do crypto:start() to test their SSL stuff and so on. It would
> > have been easier just to package everything into a single package.
> 
> Everyone should install 'erlang', which depends on erlang-crypto. Not
> `erlang-base` or anything like that. `apt-get install erlang`.

In fact, this is one of the things I really like about Erlang packaging.

It is very easy to get full erlang installation by installing erlang.
erlang-nox on headless servers (no wx, gs etc). Or pick erlang-base +
what-ever-you-need. Sure, if user installs something like couchdb, which
installs subset of erlang, that will not work. And shouldn't.

OpenWRT follows the same principle: you can install base package which
has net_kernel, erts and some more basic stuff in about ~2 MB (when I
tried), and then add anything you like/need. I played with mnesia
distributed mode on my laptop and home router (tp-link with 8 megs of
flash and 16 megs of ram). Installation time? 15 minutes. 14 of which
took to figure out how easy it is (and possible), and 1 minute for
installation.

Of course, for "real" systems you would cross-compile it, generate a
release and then go crazy optimizing it. However, something between
one-click-desktop-installation (easy!) and manual cross-compilation
(advanced!) is very useful and convenient in some circumstances. For
instance, showing off master-master DB replication between a crappy home
router and a laptop on Friday night in a CS dorm.

Motiejus