View Source Building and Installing Erlang/OTP
Introduction
This document describes how to build and install Erlang/OTP-27. Erlang/OTP should be possible to build from source on any Unix/Linux system, including macOS. You are advised to read the whole document before attempting to build and install Erlang/OTP.
The source code can be downloaded from the official site of Erlang/OTP or GitHub.
Required Utilities
These are the tools you need in order to unpack and build Erlang/OTP.
Unpacking
- GNU unzip, or a modern uncompress.
- A TAR program that understands the GNU TAR format for long filenames.
Building
- GNU
make
- Compiler -- GNU C Compiler,
gcc
or the C compiler frontend for LLVM,clang
. - Perl 5
-
ncurses
,termcap
, ortermlib
-- The development headers and libraries are needed, often known asncurses-devel
. Use--without-termcap
to build without any of these libraries. Note that in this case only the old shell (without any line editing) can be used. -
sed
-- Stream Editor for basic text transformation.
Building in Git
Build the same way as when building the unpacked tar file.
Building on macOS
- Xcode -- Download and install via the Mac App Store. Read about Building on a Mac before proceeding.
Installing
- An
install
program that can take multiple file names.
Optional Utilities
Some applications are automatically skipped if the dependencies aren't met. Here is a list of utilities needed for those applications. You will also find the utilities needed for building the documentation.
Building
OpenSSL -- The opensource toolkit for Secure Socket Layer and Transport Layer Security. Required for building the application
crypto
. Further,ssl
andssh
require a working crypto application and will also be skipped if OpenSSL is missing. Thepublic_key
application is available withoutcrypto
, but the functionality will be very limited.The development package of OpenSSL including the header files are needed as well as the binary command program
openssl
. At least version 0.9.8 of OpenSSL is required. Read more and download from http://www.openssl.org.Oracle Java SE JDK -- The Java Development Kit (Standard Edition). Required for building the application
jinterface
. At least version 1.6.0 of the JDK is required.Download from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads. We have also tested with IBM's JDK 1.6.0.
flex
-- Headers and libraries are needed to build the flex scanner for themegaco
application on Unix/Linux.wxWidgets -- Toolkit for GUI applications. Required for building the
wx
application. At least version 3.0 of wxWidgets is required.Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/files/3.0.0/ or get it from GitHub: https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets
Further instructions on wxWidgets, read Building with Wx.
Building Documentation
ex_doc
-- ExDoc is a tool to generate html and epub documentation for Erlang and Elixir projects.Download as an escript from github or get it from GitHub: https://github.com/elixir-lang/ex_doc and build your self.
ExDoc v0.34.1 was used to build the documentation for this release, but any version after that should work just as well.
You can also use
./otp_build download_ex_doc
to download the correct version from github. One of the following dependencies are needed to check the documentation:- sha256sum, or
- sha1sum, or
- shasum
How to Build and Install Erlang/OTP
The following instructions are for building the released source tar ball or from a git clone.
The variable $ERL_TOP
will be mentioned a lot of times. It refers to
the top directory in the source tree. More information about $ERL_TOP
can be found in the make and $ERL_TOP section below.
Unpacking
Start by unpacking the Erlang/OTP distribution file with your GNU compatible TAR program.
$ tar -zxf otp_src_27.1.3.tar.gz # Assuming bash/sh
or clone from github:
$ git clone https://github.com/erlang/otp otp_src_27.1.3
Now change directory into the base directory and set the $ERL_TOP
variable.
$ cd otp_src_27.1.3
$ export ERL_TOP=`pwd` # Assuming bash/sh
Configuring
Run the following commands to configure the build:
$ ./configure [ options ]
By default, Erlang/OTP release will be installed in /usr/local/{bin,lib/erlang}
.
If you for instance don't have the permission to install in the standard location,
you can install Erlang/OTP somewhere else. For example, to install in
/opt/erlang/27.1.3/{bin,lib/erlang}
, use the --prefix=/opt/erlang/27.1.3
option.
On some platforms Perl may behave strangely if certain locales are set. If you get errors when building, try setting the LANG variable:
$ export LANG=C # Assuming bash/sh
Building
Build the Erlang/OTP release.
$ make
Testing
Before installation you should test whether your build is working properly by running our smoke test. The smoke test is a subset of the complete Erlang/OTP test suites. First you will need to build and release the test suites.
$ make release_tests
This creates an additional folder in $ERL_TOP/release
called tests
.
Now, it's time to start the smoke test.
$ cd release/tests/test_server
$ $ERL_TOP/bin/erl -s ts install -s ts smoke_test batch -s init stop
To verify that everything is ok you should open $ERL_TOP/release/tests/test_server/index.html
in your web browser and make sure that there are zero failed test cases.
Note
On builds without
crypto
,ssl
andssh
there is a failed test case for undefined functions. Verify that the failed test case log only shows calls to skipped applications.
Installing
You are now ready to install the Erlang/OTP release! The following command will install the release on your system.
$ make install
Running
You should now have a working release of Erlang/OTP! Jump to System Principles for instructions on running Erlang/OTP.
How to Build the Documentation
Make sure you're in the top directory in the source tree.
$ cd $ERL_TOP
If you have just built Erlang/OTP in the current source tree, you have
already ran configure
and do not need to do this again; otherwise, run
configure
.
$ ./configure [Configure Args]
When building the documentation you need a full Erlang/OTP-27.1.3 system in
the $PATH
.
$ export PATH=$ERL_TOP/bin:$PATH # Assuming bash/sh
To build html
and epub
docs you need to have ExDoc v0.34.1.
See Building Documentation for information on how to
install ExDoc.
Build the documentation using:
$ make docs
It is possible to limit which types of documentation is build by passing the DOC_TARGETS
environment variable to make docs
.
Example:
$ make docs DOC_TARGETS=chunks
The currently available types are: html
and chunks
. Where:
- chunks - Build EEP-48 documentation chunks.
- html - Build html and epub documentation.
How to Install the Documentation
The documentation can be installed either using the install-docs
target,
or using the release_docs
target.
If you have installed Erlang/OTP using the
install
target, install the documentation using theinstall-docs
target. Install locations determined byconfigure
will be used.$DESTDIR
can be used the same way as when doingmake install
.$ make install-docs
If you have installed Erlang/OTP using the
release
target, install the documentation using therelease_docs
target. You typically want to use the sameRELEASE_ROOT
as when invokingmake release
.$ make release_docs RELEASE_ROOT=<release dir>
It is possible to limit which types of documentation is released using the same DOC_TARGETS
environment variable as when building documentation.
Accessing the Documentation
After installation you can access the documentation by
Browsing the html pages by loading the page
/usr/local/lib/erlang/doc/erlang/index.html
or<BaseDir>/lib/erlang/doc/erlang/index.html
if the prefix option has been used.Read the embedded documentation by using the built-in shell functions
h/1,2,3
orht/1,2,3
.
How to Install the Pre-formatted Documentation
Pre-formatted html documentation can be downloaded from http://www.erlang.org/download.html.
Extract the html archive in the installation directory.
$ cd <ReleaseDir>
$ tar -zxf otp_html_27.1.3.tar.gz
Where <ReleaseDir>
is
-
<PrefixDir>/lib/erlang
if you have installed Erlang/OTP usingmake install
. -
$DESTDIR<PrefixDir>/lib/erlang
if you have installed Erlang/OTP usingmake install DESTDIR=<TmpInstallDir>
. -
RELEASE_ROOT
if you have installed usingmake release RELEASE_ROOT=<ReleaseDir>
.
Advanced configuration and build of Erlang/OTP
If you want to tailor your Erlang/OTP build and installation, please read on for detailed information about the individual steps.
make and $ERL_TOP
All the makefiles in the entire directory tree use the environment
variable ERL_TOP
to find the absolute path of the installation. The
configure
script will figure this out and set it in the top level
Makefile (which, when building, it will pass on). However, when
developing it is sometimes convenient to be able to run make in a
subdirectory. To do this you must set the ERL_TOP
variable
before you run make.
For example, assume your GNU make program is called make
and you
want to rebuild the application STDLIB
, then you could do:
$ cd lib/stdlib; env ERL_TOP=<Dir> make
where <Dir>
would be what you find ERL_TOP
is set to in the top level
Makefile.
otp_build vs configure/make
Building Erlang/OTP can be done either by using the $ERL_TOP/otp_build
script, or by invoking $ERL_TOP/configure
and make
directly. Building using
otp_build
is easier since it involves fewer steps, but the otp_build
build
procedure is not as flexible as the configure
/make
build procedure. The binary
releases for Windows that we deliver are built using otp_build
.
Configuring
The configure script is created by the GNU autoconf utility, which checks for system specific features and then creates a number of makefiles.
The configure script allows you to customize a number of parameters;
type ./configure --help
or ./configure --help=recursive
for details.
./configure --help=recursive
will give help for all configure
scripts in
all applications.
One of the things you can specify is where Erlang/OTP should be installed. By
default Erlang/OTP will be installed in /usr/local/{bin,lib/erlang}
.
To keep the same structure but install in a different place, <Dir>
say,
use the --prefix
argument like this: ./configure --prefix=<Dir>
.
Some of the available configure
options are:
-
--prefix=PATH
- Specify installation prefix. -
--disable-parallel-configure
- Disable parallel execution ofconfigure
scripts (parallel execution is enabled by default) -
--{enable,disable}-jit
- Force enabling or disabling of the JIT. -
--{enable,disable}-kernel-poll
- Kernel poll support (enabled by default if possible) -
--enable-m64-build
- Build 64-bit binaries using the-m64
flag to(g)cc
-
--enable-m32-build
- Build 32-bit binaries using the-m32
flag to(g)cc
-
--{enable,disable}-pie
- Build position independent executable binaries. -
--with-assumed-cache-line-size=SIZE
- Set assumed cache-line size in bytes. Default is 64. Valid values are powers of two between and including 16 and 8192. The runtime system use this value in order to try to avoid false sharing. A too large value wastes memory. A to small value will increase the amount of false sharing. -
--{with,without}-termcap
- termcap (without implies that only the old Erlang shell can be used) -
--with-javac=JAVAC
- Specify Java compiler to use -
--{with,without}-javac
- Java compiler (without implies that thejinterface
application won't be built) -
--{enable,disable}-builtin-zlib
- Use the built-in source for zlib. -
--{enable,disable}-dynamic-ssl-lib
- Enable or disable dynamic OpenSSL libraries when linking the crypto NIF. By default dynamic linking is done unless it does not work or is if it is a Windows system. -
--{with,without}-ssl
- OpenSSL (without implies that thecrypto
,ssh
, andssl
won't be built) -
--with-ssl=PATH
- Specify base location of OpenSSL include and lib directories. -
--with-ssl-incl=PATH
- Specify base location of OpenSSLinclude
directory (if different than base location specified by --with-ssl=PATH). -
--with-ssl-zlib=PATH
- Path to static zlib library to link the crypto NIF with. This zlib library is most often not necessary but might be needed in order to link the NIF in some cases. -
--with-ssl-lib-subdir=RELATIVE_PATH
- Specify extra OpenSSL lib sub-directory to search in (relative to base directory). -
--with-ssl-rpath=yes|no|PATHS
- Runtime library path for OpenSSL. Default isyes
, which equates to a number of standard locations. Ifno
, then no runtime library paths will be used. Anything else should be a comma or colon separated list of paths. -
--with-libatomic_ops=PATH
- Use thelibatomic_ops
library for atomic memory accesses. Ifconfigure
should inform you about no native atomic implementation available, you typically want to try using thelibatomic_ops
library. It can be downloaded from https://github.com/ivmai/libatomic_ops/. -
--disable-smp-require-native-atomics
- By defaultconfigure
will fail if an SMP runtime system is about to be built, and no implementation for native atomic memory accesses can be found. If this happens, you are encouraged to find a native atomic implementation that can be used, e.g., usinglibatomic_ops
, but by passing--disable-smp-require-native-atomics
you can build using a fallback implementation based on mutexes or spinlocks. Performance of the SMP runtime system will however suffer immensely without an implementation for native atomic memory accesses. -
--enable-static-{nifs,drivers}
- To allow usage of nifs and drivers on OSs that do not support dynamic linking of libraries it is possible to statically link nifs and drivers with the main Erlang VM binary. This is done by passing a comma separated list to the archives that you want to statically link. e.g.--enable-static-nifs=/home/$USER/my_nif.a
. The paths have to be absolute. For drivers, the driver name has to be the same as the filename. You also have to defineSTATIC_ERLANG_NIF_LIBNAME
(seeerl_nif
documentation) orSTATIC_ERLANG_DRIVER
when compiling the .o files for the nif/driver. If your nif/driver depends on some other dynamic library, you now have to link that to the Erlang VM binary. This is easily achieved by passingLIBS=-llibname
to configure. -
--without-$app
- By default all applications in Erlang/OTP will be included in a release. If this is not wanted it is possible to specify that Erlang/OTP should be compiled without one or more applications, i.e.--without-wx
. There is no automatic dependency handling between applications. If you disable an application that another application depends on, you also have to disable the dependent application. -
--enable-gettimeofday-as-os-system-time
- Force usage ofgettimeofday()
for OS system time. -
--enable-prefer-elapsed-monotonic-time-during-suspend
- Prefer an OS monotonic time source with elapsed time during suspend. -
--disable-prefer-elapsed-monotonic-time-during-suspend
- Do not prefer an OS monotonic time source with elapsed time during suspend. -
--with-clock-resolution=high|low
- Try to find clock sources for OS system time, and OS monotonic time with higher or lower resolution than chosen by default. Note that both alternatives may have a negative impact on the performance and scalability compared to the default clock sources chosen. -
--enable-ensure-os-monotonic-time
- Enable functionality ensuring the monotonicity of monotonic timestamps delivered by the OS. When a non-monotonic timestamp is detected, it will be replaced by the last delivered monotonic timestamp before being used by Erlang's time functionality. Note that you do not want to enable this unless the OS monotonic time source on the system fails to produce monotonic timestamps. This since ensuring the monotonicity of OS monotonic timestamps will hurt scalability and performance of the system. -
--disable-saved-compile-time
- Disable saving of compile date and time in the emulator binary. -
--enable-ei-dynamic-lib
- Make erl_interface build a shared library in addition to the archive normally built. -
--disable-year2038
- Don't support timestamps after mid-January 2038. By defaultconfigure
will try to enable support for timestamps after mid-January 2038. If it cannot figure out how to do that, it will fail and abort with an error. If you anyway want to build the system knowing that the system won't function properly after mid-January 2038, you can pass this option which will enableconfigure
to continue without support for timestamps after mid-January 2038. This is typically only an issue on 32-bit platforms.
If you or your system has special requirements please read the Makefile
for
additional configuration information.
Important Variables Inspected by configure
Compiler and Linker
-
CC
- C compiler. -
CFLAGS
- C compiler flags. Defaults to "-g -O2". If you set it, these will be removed. -
STATIC_CFLAGS
- Static C compiler flags. -
CFLAG_RUNTIME_LIBRARY_PATH
- This flag should set runtime library search path for the shared libraries. Note that this actually is a linker flag, but it needs to be passed via the compiler. -
CPP
- C pre-processor. -
CPPFLAGS
- C pre-processor flags. -
CXX
- C++ compiler. -
CXXFLAGS
- C++ compiler flags. -
LD
- Linker. -
LDFLAGS
- Linker flags. -
LIBS
- Libraries.
Dynamic Erlang Driver Linking
Note
Either set all or none of the
DED_LD*
variables (with the exception ofDED_LDFLAGS_CONFTEST
).
-
DED_LD
- Linker for Dynamically loaded Erlang Drivers. -
DED_LDFLAGS
- Linker flags to use withDED_LD
. -
DED_LDFLAGS_CONFTEST
- Linker flags to use withDED_LD
in configure link tests ifDED_LDFLAGS
cannot be used in such tests. If not set,DED_LDFLAGS
will be used in configure tests. -
DED_LD_FLAG_RUNTIME_LIBRARY_PATH
- This flag should set runtime library search path for shared libraries when linking withDED_LD
.
Large File Support
Note
Either set all or none of the
LFS_*
variables.
-
LFS_CFLAGS
- Large file support C compiler flags. -
LFS_LDFLAGS
- Large file support linker flags. -
LFS_LIBS
- Large file support libraries.
Other Tools
-
RANLIB
-ranlib
archive index tool. -
AR
-ar
archiving tool. -
GETCONF
-getconf
system configuration inspection tool.getconf
is currently used for finding out large file support flags to use, and on Linux systems for finding out if we have an NPTL thread library or not.
Updating configure Scripts
Generated configure
scripts are nowadays included in the git repository.
If you modify any configure.in
files or the erts/aclocal.m4
file, you need
to regenerate configure
scripts before the changes will take effect. First
ensure that you have GNU autoconf
of version 2.69 in your path. Then execute
./otp_build update_configure [--no-commit]
in the $ERL_TOP
directory. The
otp_build
script will verify that autoconf
is of correct version and will
refuse to update the configure
scripts if it is of any other version.
Atomic Memory Operations and the VM
The VM with SMP support makes quite a heavy use of atomic memory operations. An implementation providing native atomic memory operations is therefore very important when building Erlang/OTP. By default the VM will refuse to build if native atomic memory operations are not available.
Erlang/OTP itself provides implementations of native atomic memory operations
that can be used when compiling with a gcc
compatible compiler for 32/64-bit
x86, 32/64-bit SPARC V9, 32-bit PowerPC, or 32-bit Tile. When compiling with
a gcc
compatible compiler for other architectures, the VM may be able to make
use of native atomic operations using the __atomic_*
builtins (may be
available when using a gcc
of at least version 4.7) and/or using the
__sync_*
builtins (may be available when using a gcc
of at least version
4.1). If only the gcc
's __sync_*
builtins are available, the performance
will suffer. Such a configuration should only be used as a last resort. When
compiling on Windows using a MicroSoft Visual C++ compiler native atomic
memory operations are provided by Windows APIs.
Native atomic implementation in the order preferred:
- The implementation provided by Erlang/OTP.
- The API provided by Windows.
- The implementation based on the
gcc
__atomic_*
builtins. - If none of the above are available for your architecture/compiler, you
are recommended to build and install libatomic_ops before building
Erlang/OTP. The
libatomic_ops
library provides native atomic memory operations for a variety of architectures and compilers. When building Erlang/OTP you need to inform the build system of where thelibatomic_ops
library is installed using the--with-libatomic_ops=PATH
configure
switch. - As a last resort, the implementation solely based on the
gcc
__sync_*
builtins. This will however cause lots of expensive and unnecessary memory barrier instructions to be issued. That is, performance will suffer. Theconfigure
script will warn at the end of its execution if it cannot find any other alternative than this.
Building
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.
$ export MAKEFLAGS=-j8 # Assuming bash/sh
$ make
If you've upgraded the source with a patch you may need to clean up from previous
builds before the new build.
Make sure to read the Pre-built Source Release section below before doing a make clean
.
Other useful information can be found here:
macOS (Darwin)
Make sure that the command hostname
returns a valid fully qualified host
name (this is configured in /etc/hostconfig
). Otherwise you might experience
problems when running distributed systems.
If you develop linked-in drivers (shared library) you need to link using
gcc
and the flags -bundle -flat_namespace -undefined suppress
. You also
include -fno-common
in CFLAGS
when compiling. Use .so
as the library
suffix.
If you have Xcode 4.3, or later, you will also need to download "Command Line Tools" via the Downloads preference pane in Xcode.
Building with Wx
wxWidgets-3.2.x is recommended for building the wx
application
(wxWidgets-3.0.x will also work). Download it from
https://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads or from
https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets. It is recommended to use the
latest release in the 3.2 series, which at the time of writing
is 3.2.2.1.
Note that the wxWidgets-3.3 versions are experimental, but they should
also work if 3.0 compatibility is enabled by adding
--enable-compat30
to the configure
commands below.
On all other platforms, a shared library is built as follows:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ make && sudo make install
$ export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
On Linux, a static library is built as follows:
$ export CFLAGS=-fPIC
$ export CXXFLAGS=-fPIC
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-shared
$ make && sudo make install
$ export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
On macOs, a static library compatible with macOS 13 (Ventura) and later is built as follows:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-macosx-version-min=13.0 --disable-shared
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Verify that the build and installation succeeded:
$ which wx-config && wx-config --version-full
Expected output is /usr/local/bin/wx-config
on one line, followed by the full
version number. For example, if you built version 3.2.2.1, the expected output is:
/usr/local/bin/wx-config
3.2.2.1
Build Erlang/OTP in the usual way. To verify that wx
application is
working run the following command:
$ erl -run wx demo
Pre-built Source Release
The source release is delivered with a lot of platform independent
build results already pre-built. If you want to remove these pre-built
files, invoke ./otp_build remove_prebuilt_files
from the $ERL_TOP
directory. After you have done this, you can build exactly the same way
as before, but the build process will take a much longer time.
Warning
Doing
make clean
in an arbitrary directory of the source tree, may remove files needed for bootstrapping the build.Doing
./otp_build save_bootstrap
from the$ERL_TOP
directory before doingmake clean
will ensure that it will be possible to build after doingmake clean
../otp_build save_bootstrap
will be invoked automatically whenmake
is invoked from$ERL_TOP
with either theclean
target, or the default target. It is also automatically invoked if./otp_build remove_prebuilt_files
is invoked.If you need to verify the bootstrap beam files match the provided source files, use
./otp_build update_primary
to create a new commit that contains differences, if any exist.
How to Build a Debug Enabled Erlang RunTime System
After completing all the normal building steps described above a debug
enabled runtime system can be built. To do this you have to change
directory to $ERL_TOP/erts/emulator
and execute:
$ (cd $ERL_TOP/erts/emulator && make debug)
This will produce a beam.debug.smp
executable. The
file are installed along side with the normal (opt) version beam.smp
.
To start the debug enabled runtime system execute:
$ $ERL_TOP/bin/cerl -debug
The debug enabled runtime system features lock violation checking, assert checking and various sanity checks to help a developer ensure correctness. Some of these features can be enabled on a normal beam using appropriate configure options.
There are other types of runtime systems that can be built as well using the similar steps just described.
$ (cd $ERL_TOP/erts/emulator && make $TYPE)
where $TYPE
is opt
, gcov
, gprof
, debug
, valgrind
, asan
or lcnt
.
These different beam types are useful for debugging and profiling
purposes.
Installing
Staged install using DESTDIR. You can perform the install phase in a temporary directory and later move the installation into its correct location by use of the
DESTDIR
variable:$ make DESTDIR=<tmp install dir> install
The installation will be created in a location prefixed by
$DESTDIR
. It can, however, not be run from there. It needs to be moved into the correct location before it can be run. IfDESTDIR
have not been set butINSTALL_PREFIX
has been set,DESTDIR
will be set toINSTALL_PREFIX
. Note thatINSTALL_PREFIX
in pre R13B04 was buggy and behaved asEXTRA_PREFIX
(see below). There are lots of areas of use for an installation procedure usingDESTDIR
, e.g. when creating a package, cross compiling, etc. Here is an example where the installation should be located under/opt/local
:$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/local $ make $ make DESTDIR=/tmp/erlang-build install $ cd /tmp/erlang-build/opt/local $ # gnu-tar is used in this example $ tar -zcf /home/me/my-erlang-build.tgz * $ su - Password: ***** $ cd /opt/local $ tar -zxf /home/me/my-erlang-build.tgz
Install using the
release
target. Instead of doingmake install
you can create the installation in whatever directory you like using therelease
target and run theInstall
script yourself.RELEASE_ROOT
is used for specifying the directory where the installation should be created. This is what by default ends up under/usr/local/lib/erlang
if you do the install usingmake install
. All installation paths provided in theconfigure
phase are ignored, as well asDESTDIR
, andINSTALL_PREFIX
. If you want links from a specificbin
directory to the installation you have to set those up yourself. An example where Erlang/OTP should be located at/home/me/OTP
:$ ./configure $ make $ make RELEASE_ROOT=/home/me/OTP release $ cd /home/me/OTP $ ./Install -minimal /home/me/OTP $ mkdir -p /home/me/bin $ cd /home/me/bin $ ln -s /home/me/OTP/bin/erl erl $ ln -s /home/me/OTP/bin/erlc erlc $ ln -s /home/me/OTP/bin/escript escript ...
The
Install
script should currently be invoked as follows in the directory where it resides (the top directory):$ ./Install [-cross] [-minimal|-sasl] <ERL_ROOT>
where:
-
-minimal
Creates an installation that starts up a minimal amount of applications, i.e., onlykernel
andstdlib
are started. The minimal system is normally enough, and is whatmake install
uses. -
-sasl
Creates an installation that also starts up thesasl
application. -
-cross
For cross compilation. Informs the install script that it is run on the build machine. -
<ERL_ROOT>
- The absolute path to the Erlang installation to use at run time. This is often the same as the current working directory, but does not have to be. It can follow any other path through the file system to the same directory.
If neither
-minimal
, nor-sasl
is passed as argument you will be prompted.-
Test install using
EXTRA_PREFIX
. The content of theEXTRA_PREFIX
variable will prefix all installation paths when doingmake install
. Note thatEXTRA_PREFIX
is similar toDESTDIR
, but it does not have the same effect asDESTDIR
. The installation can and have to be run from the location specified byEXTRA_PREFIX
. That is, it can be useful if you want to try the system out, running test suites, etc, before doing the real install withoutEXTRA_PREFIX
.
Symbolic Links in --bindir
When doing make install
and the default installation prefix is used,
relative symbolic links will be created from /usr/local/bin
to all public
Erlang/OTP executables in /usr/local/lib/erlang/bin
. The installation phase
will try to create relative symbolic links as long as --bindir
and the
Erlang bin directory, located under --libdir
, both have --exec-prefix
as
prefix. Where --exec-prefix
defaults to --prefix
. --prefix
,
--exec-prefix
, --bindir
, and --libdir
are all arguments that can be
passed to configure
. One can force relative, or absolute links by passing
BINDIR_SYMLINKS=relative|absolute
as arguments to make
during the install
phase. Note that such a request might cause a failure if the request cannot
be satisfied.
Erlang/OTP test architectures
Erlang/OTP are currently tested on the following hardware and operating systems. This is not an exhaustive list, but we try to keep it as up to date as possible.
Architecture
- x86, x86-64
- Aarch32, Aarch64
- powerpc, powerpc64le
- Apple M1, M2, M2 Pro
Operating system
- Fedora 31
- FreeBSD
- macOS 13 - 14
- MontaVista 4
- NetBSD
- OpenBSD
- SLES 10, 11, 12
- SunOS 5.11
- Ubuntu 10.04 - 22.04
- Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows Server 2019