erlank.mk/doc/src/guide/installation.asciidoc

[[installation]]
== Installation

=== On Unix

Erlang.mk requires GNU Make to be installed. While it will
currently work with GNU Make 3.81, support for this version
is deprecated and will be removed in 2017. We recommend
GNU Make 4.1 or later.

Git and Erlang/OTP must also be installed.

Some functionality requires that Autoconf 2.59 or later be
installed, in order to compile Erlang/OTP. Erlang/OTP may
have further requirements depending on your needs.

Some packages may require additional libraries.

==== Linux

The commands to install packages vary between distributions:

.Arch Linux
[source,bash]
$ pacman -S erlang git make

Alpine Linux and other distributions based on BusyBox come
with an incompatible `awk` program. Installing the GNU Awk
(`gawk` on Alpine) solves this issue.

==== FreeBSD

FreeBSD comes with binary and source packages:

.Install binary packages
[source,bash]
$ pkg install erlang git gmake

On FreeBSD the `make` command is BSD Make. Use `gmake` instead.

==== OS X and macOS

While Apple distributes their own GNU Make, their version is
very old and plagued with numerous bugs. It is recommended
to install a more recent version from either Homebrew or
MacPorts:

.Homebrew
[source,bash]
$ brew install erlang git make

Homebrew installs GNU Make as `gmake`. The `make` command
is the one provided by Apple.

.MacPorts
[source,bash]
$ sudo port install erlang git gmake

=== On Windows

Erlang.mk can be used on Windows inside an MSYS2 environment.
Cygwin, MSYS (the original) and native Windows (both Batch
and PowerShell) are currently not supported.

NOTE: Erlang.mk expects Unix line breaks in most of the files
(LF instead of CRLF). Make sure to configure your text editor
adequately.

The rest of this section details how to setup Erlang/OTP and
MSYS2 in order to use Erlang.mk.

==== Installing Erlang/OTP

Erlang.mk requires Erlang/OTP to be installed. The OTP team
provides binaries of Erlang/OTP for all major and minor releases,
available from the http://www.erlang.org/download.html[official download page].
It is recommended that you use the 64-bit installer unless
technically impossible. Please follow the instructions from
the installer to complete the installation.

The OTP team also provides a short guide to
http://www.erlang.org/download.html[installing Erlang/OTP on Windows]
if you need additional references.

You can install Erlang/OTP silently using the `/S` switch
on the command line:

----
C:\Users\essen\Downloads> otp_win64_18.0.exe /S
----

==== Installing MSYS2

The only supported environment on Windows is MSYS2. MSYS2 is
a lightweight Unix-like environment for Windows that comes
with the Arch Linux package manager, `pacman`.

The MSYS2 project provides a http://msys2.github.io[one click installer]
and instructions to set things up post-installation.

It is currently not possible to use the installer silently.
Thankfully, the MSYS2 project provides an archive that can
be used in lieu of the installer. The archive however requires
_7zip_ to decompress it.

First, download the
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/x86_64/msys2-base-x86_64-20150512.tar.xz/download[MSYS2 base archive]
and extract it under 'C:\'. Assuming you downloaded the
archive as 'msys2.tar.xz' and put it in 'C:\', you can
use the following commands to extract it:

----
C:\> 7z x msys2.tar.xz
C:\> 7z x msys2.tar > NUL
----

Then you can run the two commands needed to perform the
post-installation setup:

----
C:\> C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash -lc "pacman --needed --noconfirm -Sy bash pacman pacman-mirrors msys2-runtime"
C:\> C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash -lc "pacman --noconfirm -Syu"
----

==== Installing the required MSYS2 packages

After following these instructions, you can install GNU Make,
Git and any other required softwares. From an MSYS2 shell,
you can call `pacman` directly:

[source,bash]
$ pacman -S git make

You can use `pacman -Ss` to search packages. For example,
to find all packages related to GCC:

[source,bash]
$ pacman -Ss gcc

If you are going to compile C/C++ code, you will need to
install this package, as Erlang.mk cannot use the normal
"gcc" package:

[source,bash]
$ pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

You can also run commands under the MSYS2 environment from
the Windows command line or batch files. This command will
install GNU Make and Git:

----
C:\> C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash -lc "pacman --noconfirm -S git make"
----

You can use similar `bash` commands if you need to run programs
inside the MSYS2 environment from a batch file.

==== Gotchas

While most of the basic functionality will just work, there are
still some issues. Erlang.mk needs to be fixed to pass the
right paths when running Erlang scripts. We are working on it.
Erlang.mk is fully tested on both Linux and Windows, but is
lacking tests in the areas not yet covered by this guide,
so expect bugs to be fixed as more tests are added.