Erlbrew is a bash script designed to reduce the pain of installing various versions of Erlang side-by-side.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the moment only Mac OS X is supported. It should be easy to add Linux or other Unix support.
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.
erlbrew scans its work directory for build directories that are older than 7 days and deletes them automatically.
$ 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 install R15B03
Downloading Erlang R15B03
######################################################################## 100.0%
Tarball has correct MD5 checksum
Unpacking Erlang R15B03
Configuring Erlang R15B03 for Darwin
Building Erlang R15B03
Installing Erlang R15B03
$ erlbrew list
* R14B04
R15B03
R16B
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:
he 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.