Linux builds

[lpil]

Hello all!

I'm trying to contribute to beamup but I'm hitting a problem in that I cannot find any Linux builds that tool could use. It is possible that this project may expand to also provide Linux builds? Or perhaps there's some others we could use?

macOS and Windows are now well supported, so Linux is the missing piece of the puzzle for installing BEAM toolchains on popular operating systems.

Thanks,
Louis

[wojtekmach]

This is just for Ubuntu but you can use https://github.com/hexpm/bob?tab=readme-ov-file#erlang-builds today. I plan to eventually move them to this repository. These are not perfectly aligned with macOS and Windows builds as they have OpenSSL and dynamically linked (its static linking for other two) but I think it makes sense for Ubuntu builds. For that reason I’m a bit hesitant but I think Ubuntu builds will eventually be moved here.

If someone is able to build Linux builds that are instead distribution independent, I’d love to host them here.

[wojtekmach]

You can also test https://github.com/cocoa-xu/otp-build or beammachine.cloud. I think I hit some issues when trying them with Ubuntu but I don’t think I’ve reported them unfortunately. If they work across distributions, I’d be happy to move/copy (I don’t think maintainers would mind) them here so there is a central place.

If you end up testing these let us know how it goes!

[lpil]

I looked at hexpm/bob but it's Ubuntu only, which is very limiting. I think we'd want to be able to support at least derivatives of Debian, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, OpenSUSE, and Void.

I've not seen cocoa.build before, but it seems to only have macOS builds for the latest OTP versions.

[tsloughter]

I've planned that once Ubuntu builds were moved here I'd submit work for adding Fedora builds and commit to maintaining that.

[tsloughter]

@lpil looks like they have the latest for linux but it got split into 2 releases https://github.com/cocoa-xu/otp-build/releases/tag/v27.1.1

Oh, except they don't have 27.1.2 at all, mac or linux.

[tsloughter]

I just tried cocoa's linux builds and they may work on Fedora but they warn at start time about "/lib64/libtinfo.so.6: no version information available".

I don't like that their tarballs are paths usr/local/... but maybe they are open to changing that. It can of course be worked around, just a little harder to support in beamup at least.

[wojtekmach]

@tsloughter I can prepare and commit to maintaining Ubuntu builds to unblock you but yeah if someone is able to make generic Linux builds in the meantime I’d rather do that, seems way more appealing. We could even test them on CI on build time across different distributions using Docker.

[lpil]

Do you think it would be possible to create statically linked or otherwise generic Linux builds? Ubuntu and Fedora are a large portion of the ecosystem but others are still common.

edit: oops, snap Wojtek! :)

[wojtekmach]

I don’t know. I hope so. Looking at beammachine and cocoa.build that seemed the goal. But if it’s not possible that’s that and we should have per distribution builds here.