= Proposed Self Contained Change: Better Erlang Support = https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/BetterErlangSupport

Change owner(s): Peter Lemenkov lemenkov@gmail.com, Sam Kottler <skottler [at] redhat.com>, Fedora Erlang SIG erlang@lists.fedoraproject.org

Update Erlang/OTP to R17, and improve Erlang integration with the rest of Fedora.

== Detailed Description == Erlang in Fedora is already in a good shape. However we can do better since there are a number of annoying shortcomings and issues. Just a few of them:

* Fedora partially enabled Ellyptic Curve Crypto recently but we still provide Erlang with EC disabled completely because there is no way to enable just a few EC in the current Erlang version. * Erlang<->systemd interaction is in a quite poor state currently. * There is no way to install "headless" Erlang. Every Fedora Erlang user have to install graphical libraries even if (s)he doesn't want to use GUI on the target machine. * Every daemon written in Erlang has its own logging solution which doesn't use neither syslog nor Journald. * Erlang packaging is quite complex and undocumented mostly.

In order to address all these issues we should do the following:

* Enable fine grained EC crypto support [1] by upgrading Erlang to the latest R17 (not yet released, and scheduled to April, 2014). * Start working on a better systemd support in Erlang by enabling EPMD systemd support. This could be done by merging patches from Matwey V. Kornilov [2] and systemd unit-files from openSUSE [3]. * Add erlang-ejournald [4], erlang-lager_journald_backend [5], and make Journald as a default logging backend. * Split-off infrequently used modules [6] which requires X11, Pulseaudio and ensure that it won't break anything. * Fix the long-standing noarch issue by providing additional default location for Erlang bytecode data. * Update Erlang RPM-related macros to improve packaging by reducing spec-file sizes.

== Scope == Proposal owners: * We must rebuild Erlang R17 and submit it to build-overrides. ** We have to rebuild all the packages listed below in the Dependencies [7] section. * WiP: A necessary *.socket unit must be added to erlang-erts to enable EPMD socket activation. ** Every Erlang daemon's systemd unit must require epmd.socket. * We need to fill new review request for erlang-ejournald ** We have to fill new review request for erlang-lager_journald_backend * We have to patch out GUI parts and provide a way to tell user what to do in order to enable this functionality. * Add another default directory to look for Erlang *.beam files. * Every Erlang package must require erlang-rpm-macros. * Riak has growing Bugzilla backlog. We have to address all of these issues. Other developers: N/A Release engineering: N/A Policies and guidelines: We should create Erlang Packaging Guidelines which doesn't exist yet.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1023017 [2] https://github.com/matwey/otp/tree/systemd [3] https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/erlang [4] https://github.com/travelping/ejournald [5] https://github.com/travelping/lager_journald_backend [6] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/784693 [7] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/BetterErlangSupport#Dependencies