Should OTP be the Standard Library?

[starbelly]

@AstonJ

Ah nice, and that’s very interesting to me because I always thought there was Erlang and a std lib (like most languages) and then OTP was on top of that. If OTP is indeed just the standard library and is always likely to be, then I think there is merit in considering dropping the OTP name and it just being classed as the standard library.

I agree with Jose on it simply being stdlib by another name. I also agree that it’s probably about time to drop OTP, but it’s not a hill I’m going to die on either

At the very least the docs could better clarify as to what OTP is exactly. You’ll find in the docs mention of ERTS being part of OTP iirc. That doesn’t jive with my mental model. To make matters worse, we have a stdlib application, but that doesn’t encompass all of OTP.

You could say OTP I suppose is stdlib + all the other applications and tools that ship with Erlang/OTP. This ranges from mnesia to dbg, etc. etc. In that sense, it’s really more than just stdlib, it’s an entire framework for building systems in Erlang on top of ERTS and the BEAM with conventions and design principles to boot.

Of course, you could also say OTP is all that + ERTS

But, I’d still just be happy to say it’s stdlib