Support for non-unique process labels?

Nathan Long <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lang.erlang.general
Message-ID <CAOyE-6arnCHGz7CQDL8xdbxJpp2C7yHeUQS-1OQbf9RJcZSLcQ@mail.gmail.com>
Is there a way to add a non-unique label to a process? If not, I would like
to propose that it be added.

The label could be shown with or instead of a PID. I think this would be
useful in at least two areas.

First, when observing a running system, the PID is not descriptive. I have
Observer open right now looking at part of my system, and I can see one
globally registered process name displayed, but everything else is a PID.
What are those processes? I might be able to figure it out by clicking the
process and seeing what its initial call was, but often I can tell is "it's
a GenServer." The structure of the system would be much more apparent if I
saw labels like "db_connection" or "request_queue_worker".

Second, when reading error messages in logs or an exception tracker, the
PID is not useful. For example, I'm looking at an error in Sentry right now
that says "Sentry.CrashError error ** (exit) 'stopping because dependent
process <0.2255.0> died: killed'". I have no idea what `<0.2555.0>` was, so
I don't know what to debug.

Does this exist or would others support it being added to the BEAM?

-- Nathan
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.