vfox-erlang plugin

Erlang/OTP vfox plugin. Use the vfox to manage multiple Erlang/OTP versions in Linux/Darwin MacOS/Windows. all platform~

Usage

# install plugin
vfox add --source https://github.com/version-fox/vfox-erlang/archive/refs/heads/main.zip erlang

# install an available version
vfox search erlang
# or specific version 
vfox install erlang@25.3.2.10

Before install Erlang/OTP in Linux/Darwin MacOS

vfox-erlang plugin would install Erlang/OTP through the Erlang/OTP source code compilation. So you must have the utilities mentioned in the document -> Building and Installing Erlang/OTP.

Here are examples of installing on Ubuntu 20.04 and MacOS 13.

install in Linux (Ubuntu 20.04/22.04)

# install utilities
sudo 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

You can reference the E2E test in Ubuntu 20.04: .github/workflows/e2e_test_linux.yaml

install in Darwin (MacOS 13)

# install utilities
brew install autoconf libxslt fop wxwidgets openssl

You can reference the E2E test in MacOS 13: .github/workflows/e2e_test_darwin.yaml

Note

By default, vfox-erlang plugin will Build EEP-48 documentation chunks for get doc in REPL (eg: h(list).) and lsp docs hint.

You cal also use the OTP_CONFIGURE_ARGS environment variable to control install behavior. reference this documentation https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/HOWTO/INSTALL.md#configuring-1 for more configuration. eg:

# example
export OTP_CONFIGURE_ARGS="--enable-jit --enable-kernel-poll"
vfox install erlang@25.3.2.10

Building Erlang/OTP on a relatively fast computer takes approximately 5 minutes. To speed it up, you can utilize parallel make with the -j<num_jobs> option. for example:

export MAKEFLAGS=-j8
vfox install erlang@25.3.2.10

install Erlang/OTP in Windows platform

In windows, the vfox-erlang plugin downloads the Erlang/OTP version of the exe installer from the Erlang/OTP releases and executes it for you.

This is an installation example in PowerShell:

vfox install erlang@25.3.2.12
vfox use erlang@25.3.2.12
Invoke-Expression "$(vfox activate pwsh)"
# Test the installation results
& erl.exe -eval 'erlang:display({otp_release, erlang:system_info(otp_release)}), halt().' -noshell

You can reference the E2E test in in windows-2022: .github/workflows/e2e_test_windows.yaml

install a prebuilt Erlang/OTP version

After vfox-erlang v1.1.0, you can also install a prebuilt Erlang/OTP version in Ubuntu linux system and MacOS.

Before install, you must disable vfox search cache. Reference: https://vfox.lhan.me/guides/configuration.html#cache-settings

Linux (Ubuntu)

This is an installation example in Bash Shell:

# install an available version, you can also a avaliable version in: https://bobs-list.kobrakai.de/
USE_PREBUILT_OTP="ubuntu-20.04" vfox search erlang
USE_PREBUILT_OTP="ubuntu-20.04" vfox install erlang@26.2.3

USE_PREBUILT_OTP var value for Linux is one of: ["ubuntu-14.04", "ubuntu-16.04", "ubuntu-18.04", "ubuntu-20.04", "ubuntu-22.04", "ubuntu-24.04"].

MacOS

For MacOS, you can use prebuilt Erlang/OTP versions from @erlef/otp_builds by setting the USE_PREBUILT_OTP environment variable:

# install a prebuilt version for MacOS (automatically detects architecture)
USE_PREBUILT_OTP=true vfox search erlang
USE_PREBUILT_OTP=true vfox install erlang@26.2.3

USE_PREBUILT_OTP can be set to any non-empty value (e.g., "1", "true", "macos") to enable prebuilt mode.

Supported architectures: amd64, x86_64, arm64, aarch64. macOS uses a dedicated prebuilt version list that differs from the Ubuntu prebuilt versions.