> I also tend to believe Docker makes little sense, where OTP releases are the alternative.
Docker makes a lot of sense, actually, because it allows you to run integration tests easily and ship Erlang releases in the same way as everything else. There are exceptions, of course. As for OTP releases, they are a good way intermediate step before packaging code to RPMs, but upgrades should be done the usual way: via blue-green deployment. Don't even argue with me :-) I happened to support a huge system that uses OTP upgrades, and the amount of complexity and tricky bugs, that live code loading introduces, is immense. No one is smart enough to do it :-)
Was going to say something similar - having a consistent, predictable deployment environment is really valuable from a support perspective, especially if you are shipping a service to several end users (as opposed to deploying an in-house service).
Docker makes a lot of sense, actually, because it allows you to run integration tests easily and ship Erlang releases in the same way as everything else. There are exceptions, of course. As for OTP releases, they are a good way intermediate step before packaging code to RPMs, but upgrades should be done the usual way: via blue-green deployment. Don't even argue with me :-) I happened to support a huge system that uses OTP upgrades, and the amount of complexity and tricky bugs, that live code loading introduces, is immense. No one is smart enough to do it :-)