Exploring Best Practices for Deploying Erlang Applications Using Docker and Ansible

Jade Allen's talk focuses on the complexities of deploying BEAM ecosystem applications, particularly Erlang, into operational environments. She highlights the lack of best practices in packaging, deployment, and configuration. Using her experience, Jade elaborates on building small Docker containers and Debian packages, and leveraging tools like Ansible and Terraform for maintaining infrastructure. Emphasis is placed on making Docker containers as small as possible, using multi-stage builds, and avoiding unnecessary cross-compilation. She also touches on the importance of systemd for managing Linux services, the value of Recon for debugging, and the need for structured logs and metrics for effective monitoring and logging. Areas for improvement include modularizing the BEAM runtime to reduce unnecessary bloat.