next-ls VS burrito

We also use `zig cc` to find NIFs inside your project, and re-compile them for the target platform.

Currently as a non-trivial proof of concept, one of the latest LSP editor plugins for Elixir, NextLS (https://github.com/elixir-tools/next-ls), is using Burrito to effortlessly deploy a single-file binary of the language server to thousands of people already.

Burrito was created to help folks use Elixir for applications outside of the standard Web App space. I hope it helps expand the type of projects people use Elixir for, and I'm excited to see what people create :)

- https://github.com/elixir-tools/next-ls/releases/tag/v0.15.0

I’ve been writing Elixir for years and I can’t even think of the last time I had a language server crash…

Plus, these days there are many alternate LSP implementations besides Elixir LS:

https://github.com/lexical-lsp/lexical

https://github.com/elixir-tools/next-ls

I have also switched to rtx, and even use it in the Next LS build pipeline as an easy way to install Elixir & OTP.

https://github.com/elixir-tools/next-ls/blob/main/.cirrus.ym...

Most of the BEAM isn't well-suited for trends in today's immutable architecture world (Docker deploys on something like Kubernetes or ECS). Bootup time on the VM can be long compared to running a Go or OCaml binary, or some Python applications (I find larger Python apps tend to spend a ton of time loading modules). Compile times aren't as fast as Go, so if a fresh deploy requires downloading modules and compile-from-scratch, that'll be longer than other stacks. Now, if you use stateful deploys and hot-code reloading, it's not so bad, but incorporating that involves a bit more risk and specific expertise that most companies don't want to roll into. Basically, the opposite of this article https://ferd.ca/a-pipeline-made-of-airbags.html

Macros are neat but they can really mess up your compile times, and they don't compose well (e.g. ExConstructor and typed_struct and Ecto Schemas all operate on Elixir Structs, but you can't use all three)

If your problem is CPU-bound, there are much better choices: C++, Rust, C. Python has a million libraries that use great FFI so you'll be fine using that too. Ditto memory-bound: there are better languages for this.

This is also not borne from direct experience, but: my understanding is the JVM has a lot more knobs to tune GC. The BEAM GC is IMO amazing, and did the right thing from the beginning to prevent stop-the-world pauses, but if you care about other metrics (good list in this article https://blog.plan99.net/modern-garbage-collection-911ef4f8bd...) you're probably better off with a JVM language.

While the BEAM is great at distribution, "distributed Erlang" (using the VM's features instead of what most companies do, and ad-hoc it with containers and infra) makes assumptions that you can't break, like default k-clustering (one node must be connected to all other nodes). This means you can distribute to some number of nodes, but it's hard to use Distributed Erlang for hundreds or thousands of nodes.

Deployment can be mixed, depending on what you want. BEAM Releases are nice but the lack some of the niceness of direct binaries. Libraries can work around this (like Burrito https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito).

If you like static types, Dialyzer is the worst of the "bolted-on" type checkers. mypy/pyright/pyre, Sorbet, Typescript are all way better, since Dialyzer only does "success typing," and gives way worse messages.

   [1]: https://morepablo.com/2023/05/where-have-all-the-hackers-gone.html

The answer was given by the Elixir community with burrito which enables users to pack up everything an Elixir application needs within a binary namely Zig Archiver to package the binary and Zig Wrapper that wraps the Erlang Virtual Machine to be used in multiple platforms (Zig + Rust in the same project 🤯).

Might be worth looking into burrito for that use case?

Elixir is extremely practical for building systems, I know some sysadmin/devops that write their tools in it - which is maybe a bit of a leap for most. It has better support for cli stuff these days but it's not it's strong suit - you can create single-bin packages with stuff like https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito or regular "mix releases". (LiveView is very sexy.) It's not statically typed. There is some experimental skunkworks project to add typing to it but probably wont see any public preview until mid/late next year as I understand it.

I would consider 1 to be the major blocker but Burrito has addressed many of the concerns here, including cross-compilation. The only downside of Burrito is that the first boot has to unpack the runtime (which is sub-second in my experience).

Sure! Elixir's been great. Phoenix is a joy to work with, and many of the concurrency primitives built into OTP make it the perfect foundation for a product like this. And rustler makes it super easy to add low-level / native code.

I will say the big downside to using Elixir is that distributing releases is a bit cumbersome. `mix release` expects that you're building on the same OS / version as you'll be running on, though we're looking into using something like burrito [1] aim to alleviate this.

[1] https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito

I was intrigued so I went to hunt for the Burrito repo [1].

I thought it was some sort of Erlang native compiler written in Zig (which sounds like an incredible pain in the ass), but it's really "just" a cross-platform installer. Still useful !

[1]: https://github.com/burrito-elixir/burrito/issues?q=is%3Aissu...