> On 11/07/2012 11:47, Thomas Lindgren wrote:
>> 1. Too few dedicated erlang web programmers, so still a lot of DIY.
>> This may be a bootstrapping/community issue. Which is nontrivial, by
>> the way.

>> 2. Packages: Let me gripe a bit. At work, we've had endless trouble
>> with Ruby gems, some hair tearing with CPAN, and have spent a couple
>> of man years on packaging for RH and Debian. The whole process is
>> still pretty clunky and hacky. So not a solved problem in the rest of
>> the world either IMO and the erlang way has some advantages. But I
>> agree that more love is needed to catch up, especially on usability.
> Things need A LOT more love. I want to use cowboy to write some web
> software. Looks easy enough. There are Erlang drivers for the database I
> need to use, so all looks OK to proceed.  I have just started with
> Erlang so not too familiar with things yet. This is my experience.

> 1) Found cowboy needs rebar - and rebar documentation is
> thin/non-existent/hiding.

> 2) Find rebar is not available on windows.  OK. I'll upgrade a VM I have
> to Unbuntu 12:04. (which takes 3 hours, fails and needs nursing back to
> health.  After removing and re-installing some packages things are now
> OK, apart from the occasional crash.  Aside - virtual box provides a
> rather standard environment, so should not be a problem. And I though
> Linux was supposed not to crash like Windows. Not my experience.  Oh
> well - press on.

> 3) I discover that the install of rebar into an apt-get install of
> Erlang will cause all sort of problems.

> In my book that means that at least one of those installs is not simple
> minded, or had inadequate checking.
> It is simply wrong. Maybe both. No matter, decide to install from source.

> 4) Screw up courage and download and compile Erlang 15B - all goes
> well.  Woo-Hoo on a roll here!

> 5) Download, and compile rebar from source. That appears to work and it
> tells me to put it on the path.

> 6) Eh? Type "path" - gets "not installed" error message. Back to Google.
> Eventually find the command I need is env.  See path is a whole slew of
> directories.

> Which should I use? Will the next upgrade to Ubuntu wipe some of them?
> Don't know. Don't know how to find out. Look in each one and decide that
> /usr/local/bin is probably a fair choice, because it contains erl. Copy
> rebar in.

> 7) Now I can start the instructions at
> http://blog.pqsdk.org/from-zero-to-deployment-with-cowboy-in-5-minu

> Note the title includes the sales pitch "In 5 minutes".  I have already
> spent many hours getting the the start position. (At least I hope its
> the start position).

> 8) Issue first command and find hg is not an installed command. Apt-get
> install hg can't find the package.

> It wasn't the start position!  Google turns up that hg is actually
> called mercurial and gives me the magic incantation to install it.

> 9) hg installs and I get to clone woody from bitbucket.  Step 1 complete.

> 10) Next command is ./app.sh cowgirl .   I think that create the app (or
> at least its framework). It reports no errors.

> 11) Then ./build-compile.sh  - OK, build and compile.  NO errors. Great.

> 12) Next comes  ./build-release.sh

> This fails saying files exist and were not generated. It adds that I
> need force=1 on the command line to force it. Why? If forcing is a good
> idea, the software should just do it. Heck, its only to learn. I can
> delete and start over if necessary - just press on. Add force=1 to the
> command line.

> 13) When I do I get this.

> ian@anake:~/projects/cowgirl$ ./build-release.sh force=1
> ==> rel (create-node)
> ERROR: One or more files already exist on disk and were not generated:
>      * "reltool.config"
>      * "files/erl"
>      * "files/nodetool"
>      * "files/cowgirl"
>      * "files/app.config"
>      * "files/vm.args"
> To force overwriting, specify force=1 on the command line.
> ==> rel (generate)
> ERROR: generate failed while processing /home/ian/projects/cowgirl/rel:
> {'EXIT',{{badmatch,{error,"Release \"cowgirl\" uses non existing
> application cowgirl"}},
>           [{rebar_reltool,generate,2,[]},
>            {rebar_core,run_modules,4,[]},
>            {rebar_core,execute,4,[]},
>            {rebar_core,process_dir,4,[]},
>            {rebar_core,process_each,5,[]},
>            {rebar_core,process_dir,4,[]},
>            {rebar_core,process_commands,1,[]},
>            {rebar,main,1,[]}]}}
> ian@anake:~/projects/cowgirl$

> This is copy/pasted from the log, so I can see I did indeed spell force
> correctly.

> Where now? Is the pre-existence of those files a problem? I have no
> idea, and no idea how to find out. However experience tells me to make a
> real effort to fix the first error, even if later ones can be ignored.
> Should I delete them all and try again?

> What does the error in the generate mean? It can't mean the application
> cowgirl does not exist because hg/mercurial  brought it down without
> errors and app.sh created it without errors.

> The talk is right. Erlang is just too damn difficult to do the easy stuff.

> It may have been humorously presented (I wasn't there), but the
> take-away it so true.

> Early difficulties are putting off many would-be adopters.

> (And I'm stuck!  Help appreciated! )