Re: Build elixir-devel against runtime25

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022, at 1:34 AM, Dave Cottlehuber wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2022, at 03:35, Pat Maddox wrote:
>> I want to build elixir-devel against erlang-runtime25.
>
> Hey Pat
>
> You don’t normally need to build it against a different BEAM target;
> it’s sufficient to use a newer one via the usual PATH prepending
> method. Or have you found something where this matters?

I’ve not found a technical reason where this matters.

It is more about adoption, as I talk with other developers. Convos go something like this:

“FreeBSD bundles old elixir!”
“Use lang/elixir-devel”
“I don’t want to use a devel version.”
“It’s not devel like in Linux, where it’s unstable… more like it’s meant for developers. It’s the production release, it’s just the package name.”
“It uses OTP/24! I want 25!”
“Install lang/erlang-runtime25 and add it to PATH”
“But elixir built against 24…”
“25 runs it just fine, it’s backwards compatible”
“There might be performance issues, and I’d just be more comfortable if it built on 25, and I can do that on Linux”
“Okay change this line in the Makefile”

So… yeah :)

There’s a growing interest in FreeBSD+Elixir at my company (we’ve had an app running in prod for several months now). There are some perceived limitations, which so far I’ve been able to respond to with education.

So thank you for all the effort you’ve put in over the years, and responding so quickly to this next item! :)

Pat