[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?]]]

[Loïc Hoguin]

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.

-- 
Loïc Hoguin
http://ninenines.eu