installing on windows path issue

[shishini]

I then followed the instruction for installing rebar3 on windows as per the getting started link , but obviously I get this error

PS C:\> rebar3 --help
'escript.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

because Beginning with R9C, the Windows installer does not add Erlang to the system wide path. If one wants to have Erlang in the path, one has to add it by hand.

My questions are

1. Why did the erlang installer stop adding erlang to the system path or even user path, is there a good reason for this, should I avoid it
2. rebar3 need erlang bin directory on the path, so why isnt this mentioned anywhere
3. is there other path variables i should be setting, one video on youtube mention RABAR_CAHCE_DIR, but i cannnot find the documentation for this on the rebar3 page
4. the erlang bin folder have some .BOOT files, and I dont know if i should have those on my path

Any advice, should i just add the erlang bin folder to the path, or is there a better option

[ferd]

1. R9C is from 2004, 20 years ago. I can't provide an answer to that because I was still in high school and did not know how to program back then.
2. The assumption is that generally, people using Erlang on Windows knew how to install it on Windows. Rebar3 as a website also does not explain how to install Erlang on Linux nor OSX either. The documentation for Rebar3 instead points you to Adopting Erlang's install instructions which do specify exactly how to do that
3. REBAR_CACHE_DIR is a way to override a default value and does not need to be specified. It is however documented on the Rebar3 website under the Base Config section, in the 'environment configuration' subsection
4. I don't recall even having to care about the boot files being in path once the basic setup was in place, but I haven't had a functional windows computer for the last few years.

I would recommend reading https://adoptingerlang.org/docs/development/setup/#installing-erlang-otp for instructions. They were current as of a few years ago, and I don't expect things to have changed drastically.