EDTS Erlang files are not compiled as part of package installation

[robertoaloi]

When installing the EDTS package via ELPA, the EDTS Erlang files are not compiled automatically.
I had to manually enter the ~/.emacs.d/elpa/edts-xxx directory and run make.

[tjarvstrand]

Yes, this problem has existed for a long time but I have never been able to reproduce it locally. If you are able to do that then a fix or suggestion for a fix would be very appreciated :)

[pierre-rouleau]

@robertoaloi @tjarvstrand I had EDTS running for a long time. Time passed and then I wanted to use EDTS again. It was not starting the main server. And the issue was that make had not been run. But between then and now I have updated Erlang and updated EDTS. I don't know the order, I was not paying attention at that time.

Is it possible make fails silently if Erlang is not available or the proper version of Erlang is not available at the moment EDTS is (re-)installed leaving the ~/.emacs.d/elpa/edts-xxx unbuilt causing EDTS to fail later on?

Would it not be possible to provide more diagnostics when EDTS fails starting the main server? The Elisp code could check for the presence of the _build directory and 1) report it's missing 2) check if Erlang is available and what version is available and 3) either suggest to run make or run make itself. Then the code could retry once and report if that failed again.

[robertoaloi]

Hi @pierre-rouleau, I am not really involved in the development of EDTS any longer in favour of the Erlang LS language server (https://github.com/erlang-ls/erlang_ls) which currently provides a super-set of the EDTS features, for Emacs as well as for all other most common IDEs. You may want to check with @sebastiw about this ticket instead.

[sebastiw]

@pierre-rouleau I think your idea about checking if it is built before starting is great, and I'll add it as soon as I have a little bit time over.

I'm also working on removing rebar3, (and possibly the deps) in order to provide backward compatibility, stability and more control, especially for starting. Found some bugs wrt stability as well during this work. I'll try to merge it as soon as possible as well.