erlang.mk

Common Makefile rules for building and testing Erlang applications.

Usage

Add the file erlang.mk to your project, then use the following base Makefile:

PROJECT = my_project

include erlang.mk

Dependencies

Erlang projects often depend on other projects to run. Adding dependencies to the Makefile is easy. You need to create the variable DEPS listing the names of all the dependencies, along with one dep_$(NAME) variable per dependency giving the git repository and commit to retrieve.

These variables should be defined before the include line.

DEPS = cowboy bullet
dep_cowboy = https://github.com/extend/cowboy.git 0.8.4
dep_bullet = https://github.com/extend/bullet.git 0.4.1

They will always be compiled using the command make.

You can also specify test-only dependencies. These dependencies will only be downloaded when running make tests. The format is the same as above, except the variable TEST_DEPS holds the list of test-only dependencies.

TEST_DEPS = ct_helper
dep_ct_helper = https://github.com/extend/ct_helper.git master

Please note that the test dependencies will only be compiled once when they are fetched, unlike the normal dependencies.

Compiled files

The following files will be automatically compiled:

Wildcard	Description
`src/$(PROJECT).app.src`	OTP application resource file
`src/*.erl`	Erlang source files
`src/*.core`	Core Erlang source files
`templates/*.dtl`	ErlyDTL template files

Only the .app.src file and at least one .erl file are required.

Commands

The following targets are defined:

Targets	Description
`all`	Compile the application and all dependencies
`clean-all`	Clean the application and all dependencies
`app`	Compile the application
`clean`	Clean the application
`deps`	Compile the dependencies
`clean-deps`	Clean the dependencies
`docs`	Generate the Edoc documentation
`clean-docs`	Clean the Edoc documentation
`tests`	Run the common_test suites
`build-plt`	Generate the PLT needed by Dialyzer
`dialyze`	Run Dialyzer on the application

Cleaning means removing all generated and temporary files.

Dependencies are fetched as soon as a command involving them is invoked. This means that most of the targets will trigger a dependency fetch. It is only done once per dependency.

The default target when calling make is all.

You can combine targets to perform many operations. For example, the shell command make clean app will have the effect of recompiling the application fully, without touching the dependencies.

A common workflow when editing a file would be to run make regularly to see if it compiles (or less often make clean app if you want to recompile everything), followed by make dialyze to see if there are any type errors and then make tests to run the test suites. The result of the test runs can be browsed from the logs/index.html file.

Options

The following variables can be overriden:

V defines the verbosity of the commands. You can set it to an empty value to make commands verbose.

ERLC_OPTS allows you to change the erlc compilation options. You should always compile with at least the +debug_info set.

COMPILE_FIRST is a list of modules (not filenames) that should be compiled before all others.

DEPS_DIR is the path to the directory where the dependencies are downloaded to. It defaults to deps. It will be propagated into all the subsequent make calls, allowing all dependencies to use the same folder as expected.

CT_SUITES is the list of common_test suites to run when you use the make tests command. If your suite module is named ponies_SUITE then you only need to put ponies in the list.

PLT_APPS is the list of applications to include when building the .plt file for Dialyzer. You do not need to put erts, kernel or stdlib in there because they will always be included. The applications the project depends on will also be included.

DIALYZER_OPTS allows you to change the dialyzer options.

Extra targets

If you need more functionality out of your Makefile, you can add extra targets after the include line.

Defining a target before the include line will override the default target all.

Support

Official IRC Channel: #ninenines on irc.freenode.net
Mailing Lists

lehoff / erlang.mk