gen_statem:start_monitor dialyzer warning

Kostis Sagonas kostis@REDACTED
Mon Jan 25 21:46:34 CET 2021


On 1/25/21 12:52 PM, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> There is room for improvement here.

Yep, definitely.  Let me throw my 2 :-

> Here gen does not export the right type for gen:start(_, monitor, ...).
> I am not sure that we should specify types in gen; it is an internal module,

For a long time now, my view has been that for OTP folks, `internal 
modules' are similar to what `unicorns' are for my little daughter. 
They are imaginary creatures which are "goosey" and nice.

But in reality, they do not really exist.  Moreover, they might look 
innocent and nice, but they have a horn that they can put to use if 
strangers manage to put their hands on them.


Seriously now, in an open source code base, you cannot expect that you 
would have a key module with a name ('gen') which is the second most 
general name that I can think of (question for the reader: guess what is 
the most `general` one?) and that this module will "just pollute the 
name space" and will not be looked at or abused by any of the thousands 
of developers who use Erlang/OTP.


My view is that you should *not* have such modules in a system!

If they are really intended to be `internal', their functions should 
only appear *inside* the modules that they support.  If they are used by 
multiple modules and you are worried about code duplication, simply have 
them as include files.

That's my view/advice at least.

Kostis


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