active: An Erlang repository from 23min

active

Active is an Erlang application that triggers rebuilds according to source changes. Active is also a new sync.

The key features are:

active no longer hogs disk and cpu to check for changes. Instead, it uses erlfsmon to observe filesystem events.
active uses rebar directly to build sources. This leverages rebar to build all kinds of source files that it can build including erlydtl templates.

An extremely simplified version of active can look like this (however it does not load any code):

# cat Makefile
sync:
	fsevent_watch -F . \
		| tee /dev/stderr \
		| env PERLIO=:raw perl -ne 's#.*\t.*\t$$ENV{"PWD"}/(apps|deps)/(\w+)/(?!ebin)#\2# && print "$$1=$$2\n"' \
		| xargs -n1 rebar compile

Setting up

Just add a line to rebar.config:

    {active, ".*", {git, "git://github.com/proger/active", "HEAD"}}

And make sure you start it along in your release boot scripts or application startup scripts:

ERL_LIBS=deps erl -pa ebin -config sys.config \
    -eval '[ok = application:ensure_started(A, permanent) || A <- [sasl,lager,gproc,erlfsmon,compiler,crypto,syntax_tools,tools,rebar,active]]'

That's it!

Caveats

rebar depends on sasl. If you don't wish to see large SASL logs (e.g. you use lager), turn them off in your config:

    {sasl, [{sasl_error_logger, false}]}

rebar writes to stdout by default. If you wish to change this behaviour, you may redefine console_log_function and log_function variables. (this is pending merge to upstream, active currently uses my fork of rebar anyway)

    {rebar, [
            {log_function, {error_logger, format}},
            {console_log_function, {error_logger, format}}
    ]}

due to the fact that rebar changes code paths while running, your regular rebar escript executable may fail. Make sure your rebar escript is as fresh as possible if it fails (take one from my fork)

23min/active

active

Setting up

Caveats