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Install Erlang Using Erlang Installer from Erlang Solutions

Home page:https://github.com/pierre-rouleau/about-erlang
Navigation:Prev, Top, Next
Time-stamp:<2021-06-05 11:36:16, updated by Pierre Rouleau>
Copyright: Copyright © 2020-2021, Pierre Rouleau
License:MIT

Erlang Solutions provide a macOS application called the Erlang Installer that allows the installation of several versions of Erlang on a macOS computer. You can get that tool on Erlang Solution Download page. Select Erlang OTP and the Mac OS X platform and you should get a link to ErlangInstaller.1.0.2.dmg or something more recent.

With this GUI tool you can install or remove several pre-compiled versions of Erlang for macOS. The tool is not always up to date, however. In the past I had to contact Erlang Solutions to request updates to the tool so it can download the latest Erlang versions. They normally fixed the problem quickly.

../res/erlanginstaller.png

With the Preferences dialog of ErlangInstaller, you can select one version you can use by default, specify the directory where the application stores its files and identify the application used for launching shells.

../res/erlanginstaller-preferences.png

When the ErlangInstaller application runs, it show up in macOS menu bar you can quickly open its Preference dialog to manage Erlang versions and also use the menu to launch a shell specialized with the default Erlang version or any of the Erlang versions you have installed.

../res/ei-menu.png

The latest version of this tool installs all versions under the ~/.erlanginstaller root (but that can be changed via the Preference dialog), along with a JSON file that contains a list of available versions and a symlink to the version you identify as a default via the ErlangInstaller application Preference dialog.

Here's what the top level view of the ~/.erlanginstaller directory looks like:

> tree -L 1 -A .erlanginstaller
.erlanginstaller
├── 19.3
├── 20.3.8
├── 21.3.8.7
├── 22.3.4.1
├── 23.0.2
├── available-releases.json
└── default -> /Users/roup/.erlangInstaller/22.3.4.1

6 directories, 1 file
>

Here again, listing only the directories at a depth of 2, with the Erlang versions I had installed at the time.

>
> tree -d -L 2 -A .erlanginstaller
.erlanginstaller
├── 19.3
│   ├── bin
│   ├── erts-8.3
│   ├── lib
│   ├── misc
│   ├── releases
│   └── usr
├── 20.3.8
│   ├── bin
│   ├── erts-9.3.3
│   ├── lib
│   ├── misc
│   ├── releases
│   └── usr
├── 21.3.8.7
│   ├── bin
│   ├── erts-10.3.5.5
│   ├── lib
│   ├── misc
│   ├── releases
│   └── usr
├── 22.3.4.1
│   ├── bin
│   ├── erts-10.7.2.1
│   ├── lib
│   ├── misc
│   ├── releases
│   └── usr
├── 23.0.2
│   ├── bin
│   ├── doc
│   ├── erts-11.0.2
│   ├── lib
│   ├── misc
│   ├── releases
│   └── usr
└── default -> /Users/roup/.erlangInstaller/22.3.4.1

37 directories
>

With this application you can install or removed versions of Erlang easily.

Their Erlang implementations work fine but the HTML documentation and the Man pages are missing. You must install these files separately. See the section titled Manual installation of Erlang OTP Documentation and Man Files which describes how to do it.

I use the same strategy as for Homebrew here and I create shell scripts and alias to activate the various Erlang versions instead of using the Erlang Installer tool that can launch pre-configured shell with specific version of Erlang. The reason I do this is to add access to the Man pages and to setup other things if I need to. For example, I'm thinking of setting up my Emacs environment to be able to access the local HTML documentation of a the module:function:arity at the cursor location or on request. For that I need to identify the location of the root where the files are stored and I do this with an environment variable that I could set in the script.

For Erlang versions installed with the Erlang Installer from Erlang Solutions I use the -ei suffix to the script and alias names. For example, here's the alias and the script for Erlang 23.0.2 installed with the tool inside ~/.erlanginstaller/23.0.2:

The alias, stored inside .bashrc:

alias use-erlang-23-ei='source envfor-erlang-23-ei'

And the bash script file that is source by it, stored in a directory that is on my system's path:

# Sourced script: envfor-erlang-23-ei  -*- mode: sh; -*-
#
# Purpose   : Activate Erlang 23.0.2 installed by Erlang Solution Installer
# Created   : Tuesday, May 18 2021.
# Author    : Pierre Rouleau <prouleau001@gmail.com>
# Time-stamp: <2021-06-04 15:44:07, updated by Pierre Rouleau>
# Copyright © 2021, Pierre Rouleau
# License   : MIT
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Description
# -----------
#
# Run with: use-erlang-23-ei
#
# This script:
# - Set PATH to get the specified Erlang version
# - Ensure that the Erlang man pages are available via the man command:
#   - Set MANPATH to provide access the Erlang man pages
#     - If MAN_ONLY_ERLANG environment variable is set, MANPATH
#       is set to that directory only, otherwise the Erlang man directory
#       is added in front of the current value of MANPATH.
# - Set following environment variables:
#   - DIR_ERLANG_DEV            : where Erlang projects are stored.
#                                 Also acts as a flag protecting against
#                                 multiple execution of scripts that
#                                 set Erlang environment.
#   - PEL_ERLANG_VERSION        : version of the active Erlang
#   - PEL_ERLANG_MAN_PARENT_DIR : Absolute path of directory that holds
#                                 Erlang man/man1 directory.
#
#  The PEL environment variables are used by Emacs PEL.

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Script
# ------
#
if [ "$DIR_ERLANG_DEV" == "" ]; then
    export DIR_ERLANG_DEV="$HOME/dev/erlang"
    export PEL_ERLANG_MAN_PARENT_DIR="$HOME/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0"
    PATH=$HOME/.erlangInstaller/23.0.2/lib/erl_interface-4.0/bin:$HOME/.erlangInstaller/23.0.2/bin:${PATH}
    export PATH
    if [ "$MAN_ONLY_ERLANG" == "" ]; then
        MANPATH=$PEL_ERLANG_MAN_PARENT_DIR/man:`manpath`
    else
        MANPATH=$PEL_ERLANG_MAN_PARENT_DIR/man
    fi
    if [ -f "$HOME/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0/man/whatis" ]; then
        export PEL_ERLANG_VERSION=23.0.2
        export MANPATH
        echo "+ Erlang 23.0.2 (from Erlang Solutions' Erlang Installer) environment set."
        echo "+ Using OTP-23.0 Man pages."
        settitle "Erlang 23.0.2 EI"
    else
        echo "Error: missing: $HOME/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0/man/whatis"
        echo "Execute make-local-whatis $HOME/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0/man"
        echo " then try again."
        echo "Reason: The whatis file is needed to use whatis on Erlang man files."
        echo "        Also Emacs uses it for man auto-completion."
        return 1
    fi
else
    echo "! Erlang environment was already set for this shell: nothing done this time."
fi

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To use this, I start a new shell and I issue the use-erlang-23-ei command:

> use-erlang-23-ei
+ Erlang 23.0.2 (from Erlang Solutions Erlang Installer) environment set.
+ Using OTP-23.0 Man pages.
> version-erl
23.0.2
> which erl
/Users/roup/.erlangInstaller/23.0.2/bin/erl
> man -w erl
/Users/roup/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0/man/man/man1/erl.1
> man -w lists
/Users/roup/docs/Erlang/otp-23.0/man/man/man3/lists.3
> erl
Erlang/OTP 23 [erts-11.0.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [ds:8:8:10] [async-threads:1]

Eshell V11.0.2  (abort with ^G)
1> q().
ok
2>
>
>