Re: Support for non-unique process labels?

On 10/05/2021 10:46, Nicolas Martyanoff wrote:
> Łukasz Niemier <[email protected]> writes:
>> I agree there. I would also love to hear what is missing in Erlang ecosystem. Especially as
>> SpawnFest is coming, so if something can be improved, then it will be great opportunity to
>> do so.
> 
> If we are talking about the ecosystem, and especially tooling:
> 
> - Erlang still requires an external tool to build projects and handle
>    their dependencies.

Can you elaborate on how this is a bad thing and/or demonstrate that 
Erlang is unusual in that way? Because external build and deps tools are 
the norm I think.

> - Building runtime-independant executables means dealing with
>    releases, a packaging mechanism so complex that people use it through
>    two different abstraction layers (rebar3 then relx). Go demonstrated
>    how valuable it is to be able to simply build an executable that just
>    works. I am aware that dealing with code upgrade is hard. I am also
>    aware that lots of developers do not use it, but still have to pay the
>    price with releases.

Releases are hard, but can they be made simpler? They're already pretty 
simple with Relx. Do you perhaps have any additional suggestions to make 
them simpler?

I think you wanted at some point to have a one-file binary with 
everything contained. That's not impossible but it requires putting in 
the work to make it happen.

> - EScripts are still a hack, and building an escript using dependencies
>    without rebar3 is, again, way to complex. And you cannot use NIFs.

And so does using NIFs in escripts.

Building an escript without rebar3 is very simple though, it's just a 
matter of putting the files in the right location in a zip file and 
setting up the entry point in a header? Erlang.mk does it here 
https://github.com/ninenines/erlang.mk/blob/master/plugins/escript.mk

-- 
Loïc Hoguin
https://ninenines.eu