nalundgaard / erlbrew

Bash script to help you install Erlang versions side-by-side

erlbrew

Erlbrew is a bash script designed to reduce the pain of installing various versions of Erlang side-by-side.

Installation

Drop erlbrew into $HOME/bin. Make sure it's executable as in chmod +x erlbrew. You may optionally need to throw a hash -r to your bash shell.

You should also edit your $PATH to include $HOME/bin/erlbrew.d in whatever position you like. It probably makes the most sense to put it first in your list though.

Dependencies

erlbrew explicitly relies on the following tools:

• bash
• GNU tar
• curl

It also assumes that you have a working compiler environment with GNU make, GCC (or Apple's LLVM backed GCC), and other compiler tools like flex and as.

If you installed Apple's "command line compiler" package, you should be good to go. If not, you can get them without having to download all of Xcode from the App Store.

Usage

Once erlbrew is installed and executable, it accepts five basic commands:

• download
• build
• install
• use
• list

These commands do what it says on the tin. install implies build and download, build implies download. If you wish, you can augment the flags passed to the configure script by putting them in the shell variable ERLBREW_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS.

You may also set ERLBREW_MAKE_DOCS if you want erlbrew to build the release documentation. (The default behavior is to not build documentation.)

Once you have an installed Erlang environment, use the use command to make erlbrew build a bunch of symbolic links in $HOME/bin/erlbrew.d/ and rehash your bash command cache.

You can also use the list command (with no release spec) to see the installed releases available. A * will be listed next to the release currently in use.

Supported platform

At the moment only Mac OS X is supported. It should be easy to add Linux or other Unix support.

Some selected Erlang versions

erlbrew has been tested and works on R14B04 onward. Building Erlang before R14 may or may not work and we have little interest in making it work if its broken. (Sorry!)

For the release of Erlang 17, Ericcson decided to move to a new release naming scheme, dropping the R and the build numbers. So for the most recent release (as of 3 November 2014), you would type:

$ erlbrew install 17.3

Something broke

erlbrew does its work in a work directory located at $HOME/erlbrew/.build/current It also writes a logfile in this directory named erlbrew.log which contains all messages from STDOUT and STDERR.

Cleanup

erlbrew scans its work directory for build directories that are older than 7 days and deletes them automatically.

Examples

$ erlbrew use R14B04
You have switched to Erlang R14B04
$ erl

Erlang R14B04 (erts-5.8.5) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [rq:2] [async-threads:0] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.8.5  (abort with ^G)
1> q().
ok

$ erlbrew use R16B
You have switched to Erlang R16B
$ erl

Erlang R16B (erts-5.10.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [async-threads:10] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.10.1  (abort with ^G)
1> q().
ok

$ ERLBREW_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS='--with-dynamic-trace=dtrace' erlbrew install R15B03
Downloading Erlang R15B03
######################################################################## 100.0%
Tarball has correct MD5 checksum
Unpacking Erlang R15B03
Configuring Erlang R15B03 for darwin13
Building Erlang R15B03
Installing Erlang R15B03

$ erlbrew list
* R14B04
  R15B03
  R16B

See also

• kerl - same idea, better implementation :)
• perlbrew - my inspiration

License

Copyright (c) 2013 Mark Allen

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.