[erlang-questions] [ANN] power_shell 1.1.2 has been released

[Maxim Fedorov]

There are two reasons to name is eval/3:
1. Clearly indicate evaluation rather than actual execution.
2. Avoid clash with erlang:apply/3. When power_shell is started as an
application (e.g. application:start(power_shell) in Erlang shell), it
becomes a part of the shell, so you can just type eval(mod, fun,
[args]).

As for the project name, it is purely historical, and has no relation
to Microsoft.

Maxim

On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 at 21:06, Richard O'Keefe <raoknz@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> The example is power_shell:eval(dist_util, gen_challenge, []).
> With the arguments being Module, Function, Arguments, why is
> it not called power_shell:apply/3?
>
> Since I'm currently trying to learn PowerShell, I was initially
> confused by the module name.
>
> On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 at 16:02, Maxim Fedorov <maximfca@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>> power_shell is an application providing a convenient way to evaluate
>> functions extracted from compiled *.beam file, or read from *.erl
>> source.
>>
>> How do we use it at WhatsApp?
>>
>> Debugging on production machines: evaluating functions that are not
>> exported. For example, dist_util.erl contains gen_challenge/0, but it
>> is not accessible without making a change to OTP kernel application.
>> Using power_shell:eval(dist_util, gen_challenge, []) yields the
>> desired result.
>>
>> Common Tests: testing functions that are not exported. We want to test
>> against production build, providing production API.
>>
>> Development: changing *.erl file and immediately evaluating functions
>> directly from *.erl file (no need to c(mymodule) to compile and load
>> updated code).
>>
>> Package is available on hex:
>> https://hex.pm/packages/power_shell
>>
>> Source code is available on GitHub:
>> https://github.com/WhatsApp/power_shell
>>
>> Enjoy!
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