OTP Releases, Target Systems, and Relups. Oh My.

Posted: October 27th, 2008 | Author: kevin | Filed under: Erlang | View Comments

I’m currently working on writing a chapter for my book describing how to package and deploy OTP applications. In the chapter I’ve already covered the bulk of OTP packaging and deployment — structuring applications, writing app spec files, building releases, etc — but I’m not sure if I should try to cover building target systems and release upgrades/downgrades.

Frankly, I’ve never needed target systems or relups. The servers I deploy onto already have Erlang installed so I’ve never needed to build a target system. Release upgrades, at least the OTP version of it, always struck me as overly complex so I’ve shied away from them. Instead I’ve written my own system, patterned largely after Joel’s description to upgrade my running applications.

Should I cover target systems and relups or describe how to build your own code upgrade infrastructure? My gut feel is that both are targeted at the telecoms world with their embedded systems and are less applicable to “mainstream” developers but I could be totally wrong.

If you have an opinion one way or the other, please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

  • John Hornbeck
    I would like to know how to do those things. If not fully described in the book, maybe you could supply some links to resources for the subject.
  • offby1
    Yes! Please cover target systems and relups.

    I'm working on a medium-sized system which we want to keep running 24x7, even if we need to upgrade it ... so I've created a release, and done all that stuff. It works, but I get the feeling I'm doing many things either wrong, or at least unidiomatically. I'd love a book that explained how it's -really- supposed to be done.
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