What's next (for OTP/Elixir)?

More OTP info:

Also it is now possible to open device files using file:open, see OTP-11462.

For the Elixir part, there is this presentation from @josevalim at the last Elixir conf EU. It’s about code formatter and property based testing, both will be included in release 1.6 and 1.7.

For the deployment part, @bitwalker is presenting the roadmap here.

Also, not strictly linked to anything official - but I can’t wait for PragDave’s next course. He gave us a really good glimpse of what’s possible with how we go about architecting our Elixir apps in his first course, and I think once he expands on that in his second course a l o t of people are going to jump aboard. I really do think this could be huge for Elixir - his approach is radical, smart and really really exciting!

Can you tell I am really excited by it all?

I loved his first course! I read every book available at the time and of all the content intake his course was my absolute favorite!

For those wanting to play with the new releases. Things like kiex and kerl make life pretty easy.

https://github.com/taylor/kiex
https://github.com/kerl/kerl

KERL_BUILD_BACKEND=git kerl build 21.0-rc1 21.0-rc1
KERL_BUILD_BACKEND=git kerl install 21.0-rc1 /install_path

Got me up and running with the latest OTP build. Similar steps are typically required for Elixir.

kiex install 1.6.4 
kiex use 1.6.4 --default 

Do note, that I had trouble with Elixir 1.6.4 and OTP 21.0-rc1. The changes made to OTP’s Logger appear to make Elixir angry. Still, when there is a new Elixir build available that better supports OTP 21, kiex has your back (I also hear good things about asdf).

Another alternative is to check out the Erlang conferences, used to be called EUC and Erlang Factory, now called Code BEAM as there is usually a talk by someone from the OTP team telling what is in the pipeline.

Newly released Elixir 1.6.5 resolves the Logger issues ppl were having while playing with OTP 21 release candidates.

This seems to work well. I had been using Nifsy to access named pipes. Now the native File APIs work just fine (better even, since I was able to crash Nifsy from time to time).

Can we get a pull-based Port output mechanism now? Give me that and I won’t need to use named pipes to back-pressure process output.

Another good check of what’s coming up is checking out this years BEAM community google summer of code projects:

• dialyzer support in elixir itself
• Tensorflow bindings for elixir
• Monitoring performance of elixir packages with elixir bench
• Elixir bindings for BarrelDB
• MySQL driver for ecto
• automate generation of StreamData denerators from type specs (if I understood correctly)

@AstonJ I’m usually not a fan of video courses, but I love PragDave (can anyone guess where my name comes from? ) and with such a glowing recommendation from you I might give it a shot.

@CptnKirk asdf is great, my only version manager for 1.5 years on 3 different machines.

Waaaat, you haven’t done it yet!?

It’s worth many more times it’s current price tag, but I persuaded Dave to drop the price to $30 to make it as accessible as possible and ‘too good to miss’. I reckon every Elixir developer should watch it - I really did love it that much… and I think you will too!