I’ve not used releases by now, but from what I’ve read about it in slack or otherwise online it seems to involve a lot of quirks and setup to get it to work properly. Installing elixir and using mix can be done by copy pasting a few (well documented) lines of code in your ssh session and the app is running. Comparing that to potentially fiddling around with building the release, dealing with any issues coming up and having to find solutions to those issues it doesn’t sound so marginal. Especially thinking of someone just coming into the language.
I still feel like releases are the better option long term and if releases are working for someone there’s probably no reason at all for mix run, but for me – coming from the upload-file-and-done php world – it feels nice to also have the option to skip all the ceremony. Even if it might be just for the quick and simple success feeling for novices in elixir.
