That would definitely be interesting. 
arnomi
dimitarvp
Really useful clarification. Thank you! 
I realise this isn’t your job but I am just gonna bounce the idea with you: Erlang’s BEAM configuration can really use a few cheatsheet-like resources. We can all go and gather the necessary info on demand of course – but I for one love it when such a beautiful and complex piece of machinery (like the BEAM) also comes with a few config shortcuts for commonly requested use-cases.
3
arnomi
OvermindDL1
Isn’t it way easy to get into a JVM, both for debugging and injecting in new code? I’ve done both quite a lot… >.>
2
jola
Right? It’s a selling point for Clojure, you can attach to running JVMs and redefine functions and stuff. Think scala has support for that too.
1
josevalim
Creator of Elixir
What are the commonly requested use cases? Running the VM with default settings is the common case and everything should be well-tuned towards that.
It may be that we are venturing into “unknown unknown” territory, which is why there is a disconnect, but it is worth saying the erl command line reference is quite complete: erl — OTP 29.0.2 (erts 17.0.2)
EDIT: I removed my reply to @arnomi as I misunderstood the question and @garazdawi answered it correctly next. 
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garazdawi
Erlang Core Team
I would put a meta trace on erlang:load_module/2, and then another meta trace on erlang:trace/3 to know if anyone disabled the tracing There are probably still a few ways that you could load modules without noticing it, but that should cover the obvious cases.
2
dimitarvp
In this case, on top of what you said, I’d add: version without distributed features, security-hardened version, debug-less version.
IMO such use cases are common enough. Do you disagree?
What I was saying is that a singular cheatsheet with bullet points like “start the BEAM like so if you don’t want distributed features:…” would be very useful.
And I already acknowledged Erlang’s excellent reference documentation – never criticized that. I only said I personally would be overjoyed if there were a few shortcuts through it.
0
josevalim
Creator of Elixir
Right, that’s my point. The distribution and debug features are opt-in. When you start the VM, they are not enabled by default. You don’t have to do anything.
7