Before I build a second library as a POC (really just a copy of gen_cluster) that has the user set discovery with -epmd_module and only supports calling erl_epmd:names() I thought I’d bring up this idea. I suppose DNS doesn’t have to be included in OTP for the addition to be useful, just auto connection to the returned values of names()?
This is awesome and it made me think why all these things together aren’t std and yet how DNS is such a minefield. I’m also folding in EFF’s Positioning Erlang ecosystem as “secure" and pondering if this issue is a fulcrum between features and security.
After all, it may be that integrating high level “auto-discovery” would be the next big phase of Erlang. Would that be worth enlarging the security surface by orders of magnitude? I don’t know, it depends.
I myself am thinking about node discovery without the use of DNS that is also not Erlang specific.
I may have any parts of the above wrong, I’m still learning! I’ve marked this issue for me personally as pivotal to the language future though as I naturally assumed this type of behavior was part of the “killer feature” of Erlang to begin with.
Neat, I’d never heard of that one and would never have realized what it did since its description is “for EMQX Broker”. Wish I’d known about it, I’ll hvae to investigate more to see if either I can learn from it or should ask them to re-“market” it as a general solution and already sunset gen_cluster, haha.