asdf-erlang
Erlang plugin for asdf version manager that relies on kerl for builds.
This plugin aims to combine the best of both worlds by using kerl.
kerl's compatibility and build scripts, together with asdf's easy version switching and support for the .tool-versions file. You do not need to have kerl already installed to use this. The plugin will install it's own version of kerl automatically.
Install
asdf plugin add erlang https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-erlang.git
Important: Make sure to read the Before asdf install section below to install dependencies!
Use
Check asdf readme for instructions on how to install & manage versions of Erlang. To specify custom options you can set environment variables just as you would when using kerl. For example, to skip the Java dependency during installation use:
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--disable-debug --without-javac"
asdf install erlang <version>
You can also install Erlang from git, or provide the url to a fork and build from git.
asdf install erlang ref:master
export OTP_GITHUB_URL="https://github.com/basho/otp"
asdf install erlang ref:basho
See kerl for the complete list of customization options. Note that the KERL_BASE_DIR
and KERL_CONFIG
environment variables are set by the plugin when it runs kerl so it will not be possible to customize them.
asdf install
Before Ubuntu and Debian
Note that if you are using a previous version of Linux, you may need a different version of one of the below libraries.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus"
Install the build tools (dpkg-dev g++ gcc libc6-dev make debianutils m4 perl)
apt-get -y install build-essential autoconf
Needed for HiPE (native code) support, but already installed by autoconf
apt-get -y install m4
Needed for terminal handling (libc-dev libncurses5 libtinfo-dev libtinfo5 ncurses-bin)
apt-get -y install libncurses5-dev
For building with wxWidgets (start observer or debugger!). Note that you may need to select the right wx-config
before installing Erlang.
apt-get -y install libwxgtk3.0-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpng-dev
For building ssl (libssh-4 libssl-dev zlib1g-dev)
apt-get -y install libssh-dev
ODBC support (libltdl3-dev odbcinst1debian2 unixodbc)
apt-get -y install unixodbc-dev
For building documentation:
apt-get install xsltproc fop
If you want to install all the above:
apt-get -y install build-essential autoconf m4 libncurses5-dev libwxgtk3.0-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpng-dev libssh-dev unixodbc-dev xsltproc fop
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
If you need to use wxWebView
in Erlang you'll want to a library for it:
apt-get -y install libwxgtk-webview3.0-gtk3-dev
If you want to install all the above:
apt-get -y install build-essential autoconf m4 libncurses5-dev libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev libwxgtk-webview3.0-gtk3-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpng-dev libssh-dev unixodbc-dev xsltproc fop libxml2-utils libncurses-dev openjdk-11-jdk
Arch Linux
Provides most of the needed build tools.
pacman -S --needed base-devel
Needed for terminal handling
pacman -S ncurses
For building with wxWidgets (start observer or debugger!). Make sure wx-config --selected-config
prints gtk3-unicode-...
before installing Erlang. Older OTP builds may require wxgtk2, in that case install wxgtk2-dev
from AUR.
pacman -S glu mesa wxwidgets-gtk3 libpng
For building ssl
pacman -S libssh
ODBC support
sudo pacman -S unixodbc
For building documentation and elixir reference builds:
sudo pacman -S libxslt fop
OSX
Note, for MacOS 10.15.4 and newer, 22.3.1 is the earliest version that can be installed through kerl
(and, therefore, asdf
). Earlier versions will fail to compile. See this issue for details.
Install the build tools
brew install autoconf
Install OpenSSL
brew install [email protected]
Erlang 24.1 and older require OpenSSL 1.1, read more here
Note, Erlang 25.1 and newer support OpenSSL 3.0, even for production use.
If you want to build Erlang with [email protected], install it by brew install openssl
For building with wxWidgets (start observer or debugger!). Note that you may need to select the right wx-config
before installing Erlang.
brew install wxwidgets
For building documentation and elixir reference builds:
brew install libxslt fop
Dealing with OpenSSL issues on macOS
You may encounter an SSL error with an output along these lines:
crypto : No usable OpenSSL found
ssh : No usable OpenSSL found
ssl : No usable OpenSSL found
This issue has been documented on
kerl
. If you see this
error, you can use the --with-ssl
flag with a path before installing Erlang. Here is
an example that skips the java dependency and also sets a specific (and existing)
path for OpenSSL installed via brew on macOS.
export KERL_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--without-javac --with-ssl=$(brew --prefix [email protected])"
asdf install erlang <version>
CentOS & Fedora
These steps assume a most recent build of CentOS (currently tested on CentOS 7.5 x64 & Fedora 28 x64)
Install the build tools
sudo yum groupinstall -y 'Development Tools' 'C Development Tools and Libraries'
Automatic configure script builder
sudo yum install -y autoconf
Needed for terminal handling
sudo yum install -y ncurses-devel
For building with wxWidgets (start observer or debugger!). Note that you may need to select the right wx-config
before installing Erlang.
sudo yum install -y wxGTK3-devel wxBase3
For building ssl
sudo yum install -y openssl-devel
for jinterface
sudo yum install -y java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel
ODBC support
sudo yum install -y libiodbc unixODBC-devel.x86_64 erlang-odbc.x86_64
for the documentation to be built
sudo yum install -y libxslt fop
Solus
Install the build tools
sudo eopkg it -c system.devel
For building with wxWidgets (start observer or debugger!). Note that you may need to select the right wx-config
before installing Erlang.
sudo eopkg install wxwidgets-devel libx11-devel mesalib-devel libglu-devel fop
For ODBC support
sudo eopkg install unixodbc-devel
For jinterface
sudo eopkg install openjdk-8 openjdk-8-devel
If you want to install all of the above
# Install build tools
sudo eopkg it -c system.devel
sudo eopkg install wxwidgets-devel libx11-devel mesalib-devel libglu-devel fop unixodbc-devel openjdk-8 openjdk-8-devel
OpenJDK issues on Solus
I ran into an issue where javac
wasn't a recognized command in the terminal despite having installed openjdk-8
and openjdk-8-devel
. Turns out it wasn't added to PATH
by default. So simply add it to PATH
like so:
# In ~/.bashrc add these to add Java to PATH
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib64/openjdk-8
PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
# In terminal
source ~/.bashrc
Getting Erlang documentation
Erlang may come with documentation included (as man pages, pdfs and html files,
or even embedded documentation (via c:h
function)).
For man pages this allows typing erl -man ets
to get info on ets
module.
For embedded documentation (on OTP 23+):
- In Erlang's
erl
: viac:h/1,2,3
andc:ht/1,2,3
for types - In Elixir's
iex
(Elixir 1.7+): viah/1
andt/1
for types
asdf-erlang
uses kerl for builds, and kerl is
capable of building the docs for specified version of Erlang in required
formats.
For kerl to be able to build Erlang documentation two requirements have to be met:
KERL_BUILD_DOCS
environment variable has to be set to valueyes
- Additional dependencies have to be installed. For detailed list of dependencies for your OS please refer to the specific section above
Additionally, HTML and Man formats can be ignored entirely:
KERL_INSTALL_HTMLDOCS
set tono
to not install HTML docsKERL_INSTALL_MANPAGES
set tono
to skip Man pages.
By default, docs in both of these formats are installed if KERL_BUILD_DOCS
is set.
It may be a good idea to disable those formats to save space, since docs can easily take around 200MB in addition to 100MB of base installation, yet to still have docs inside shell.
Note: Environment variable has to be set before asdf install erlang <version>
is executed, to take effect.
Setting the environment variable in bash
Type: export KERL_BUILD_DOCS=yes
to create KERL_BUILD_DOCS
environment variable and set it to true
.
Repeat the same for KERL_INSTALL_HTMLDOCS
KERL_INSTALL_MANPAGES
if required (see above).
This line could be added to your .bashrc
in case you want KERL_BUILD_DOCS
to be set for future (future installations of Erlang).
To remove environment variable: unset KERL_BUILD_DOCS
.
Setting the environment variable in fish shell
Type: set -xg KERL_BUILD_DOCS yes
to set environment variable.
Repeat the same for KERL_INSTALL_HTMLDOCS
KERL_INSTALL_MANPAGES
if required (see above).
In case you want it to be persisted between sessions (machine reboots - for example for future installations) type set -xU KERL_BUILD_DOCS yes
.
To remove environment variable type: set -e KERL_BUILD_DOCS
.
Use a specific version of kerl
Overriding the default kerl version shouldn't ever be necessary, but if you want to you a specific version of kerl you can set:
export ASDF_KERL_VERSION="2.1.1"