Setting up an Erlang development environment
I'm interested in looking at Erlang and want to follow the path of least resistance in getting up and running.
At present, I'm planning on installing Erlang R12B-3 and Erlide (Eclipse plugin). This is largely a Google-result-based decision. Initially this will be on a Windows XP system, though I am likely to reproduce the environment on Ubuntu shortly after.
Is there a significantly better choice? Even if it is tied to one platform.
Please share your experiences.
I highly recommend the Erlang mode shipped with the standard Erlang distribution. I've put together a "works out of the box" Emacs configuration which includes:
- Syntax highlighting & context-sensitive indentation
- Dynamic compilation with on-the-fly error highlighting
- Integrated Erlang shell
- And more....
You can browse my GitHub repo here:
http://github.com/kevsmith/hl-emacs
I've only done a small bit of coding in Erlang but I found the most useful method was just to write the code in a text editor and have a terminal open ready to build my code as I need to (this was in Linux, but a similar idea would work in Windows, I'm sure).
Your question didn't mention it, but if you're looking for a good book on Erlang, try this one by O'Reilly.
You could also try NetBeans there's a very nice Erlang module available: ErlyBird
- Install Erlang:
sudo aptitude install erlang - Install a recent JDK:
sudo aptitute install sun-java6-jdk - Download and install (the smallest) NetBeans edition (e.g. the PHP one): www.netbeans.org/downloads
- download the erlang module ErlyBird: sourceforge.net/projects/erlybird
- manually install the modules via NetBeans
ErlyBird features:
- syntax checking
- syntax highlighting
- auto-completion
- pretty formatter
- occurrences mark
- brace matching
- indentation
- code folding
- function navigator
- go to declaration
- project management
- Erlang shell console
I'm using Erlang in a few production systems personally as well at the office. For client side testing, documentation and development I use a MacBook Pro as the OS/platform and TextMate with the Erlang bundle as an editor.
For sever side development and deployment we use RHEL 4.x/5.x in production and for editing I use VIM. Personally, I've got 4 machines (slices on slicehost.com) running Debian using Erlang for a few websites and jobs.
I try to go with the smallest 'engineering environment possible', usually the one with the fewest dependencies from apt or yum.
To add to the Emacs suggestions, I would also recommend that you look at the advantages of distel when running the Emacs erlang-mode.