Allow installing pre-compiled builds

[paulo-ferraz-oliveira]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Kinda.

Describe the feature you'd like

I'd like kerl to use pre-compiled Erlang installs where/if possible.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I've not; this is a new use case for kerl.

Additional context

One of the things that jumps to mind is configuration:

1. we can make pre-compiled builds the default (and consider this an interface-breaking change, thus bumping kerl's major version element)
2. we can make pre-compiled opt-in e.g. via a KERL_PREFER_PRECOMPILED, that would fallback to the "regular" kerl in case pre-compiled would not be available

Use case

The use case should take into account both macOS and Linux.

For macOS, a new project supplies pre-compiled images: https://github.com/erlef/otp_builds, and these can be SHA-validated.

For Linux, I'm not sure there's a preference, but there are pre-compiled binaries out there that we could use, e.g. the ones used by setup-beam, the GitHub Action.

Mind you that having a choice would also allow tools like asdf, that rely on kerl, to choose the appropriate method for installation.

[wojtekmach]

@paulo-ferraz-oliveira is this issue up for grabs? If it is ready to be worked on, I think we should close https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-erlang/issues/165 in favor of this.

[paulo-ferraz-oliveira]

Sorry for the late answer. This is still up for grabs, unless @jadeallenx feels it's not the direction kerl should take. In any case, it is configurable, so worst case scenario (if it gets to break lots of stuff we weren't counting on...) we either change the default expectation or rollback on the change.

[jadeallenx]

I'm all in favor of supporting this use case. Historically the only platform with pre-compiled build artifacts was Windows and AFAIK, kerl doesn't run on Windows?