Erlang is a project mainly written in ERLANG and C, it's free.
Please read the whole file before attempting to build and install Erlang. You can find more information about OpenSource Erlang at
http://www.erlang.org/
The source code for Erlang/OTP can also be found in a Git repository at
http://github.com/erlang/otp
%CopyrightBegin%
Copyright Ericsson AB 1998-2009. All Rights Reserved.
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License, Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations under the License.
%CopyrightEnd%
Erlang/OTP should be possible to build from source on any Unix system, including Mac OS X.
Instructions for building from source on Windows are in the file README.win32. Binary releases for Windows can be found at http://www.erlang.org/
At Ericsson we have a "Daily Build and Test" that runs on:
Operating system Versions
-----------------------------------------------------------
Solaris/Sparc32 8, 9, 10
Solaris/Sparc64 10
Solaris/x86 10
Linux/Suse x86 9.4, 10.1
Linux/Suse x86_64 10.0, 10.1, 11.0
FreeBSD x86 7.1
Mac OS X/Intel 10.4.11 (Tiger), 10.5.8 (Leopard)
Windows XP SP3, 2003, VistaWe have also done some testing on Mac OS 10.6.0 (Snow Leopard).
Suse linux 9.1 is shipped with a patched GCC version 3.3.3, having the rpm named gcc-3.3.3-41. That version has a serious optimization bug that makes it unusable for building the Erlang emulator. Please upgrade GCC to a newer version before building on Suse 9.1. Suse Linux EnterpriSe edition 9 (SLES9) has gcc-3.3.3-43 and is not affected.
gcc-4.3.0 has a serious optimizer bug. It produces an Erlang emulator that will crash immediately. The bug is supposed to be fixed in gcc-4.3.1.
FreeBSD had a bug which caused kqueue/poll/select to fail to detect that a writev() on a pipe has been made. This bug should have been fixed in FreeBSD 6.3 and FreeBSD 7.0. More information can be found at:
getcwd() on Solaris 9 can cause an emulator crash. If you have async-threads enabled you can increase the stack size of the async-threads as a temporary workaround. See the +a command-line argument in the documentation of erl(1). Without async-threads the emulator isn't as vulnerable to this bug, but if you hit it without async-threads the only workaround available is to enable async-threads and increase the stack size of the async-threads. Sun has however released patches that fixes the issue: Problem Description: 6448300 large mnttab can cause stack overrun during Solaris 9 getcwd
These are the tools you will need in order to unpack and build Erlang/OTP.
GNU unzip, or a modern uncompress.
A TAR program that understands the GNU TAR format for long filenames (such as GNU TAR).
GNU make
GNU C compiler
Perl 5
GNU m4 If hipe (native code) support is enabled.
ncurses (Or termcap or termlib.) The development headers and libraries are needed, often known as ncurses-devel. (Use --without-termcap to build without any of these libraries. Only the old shell (without any line editing) can be used.)
OpenSSL Optional, but needed for building the Erlang/OTP applications 'ssl' and 'crypto'. You need the "development package" of OpenSSL, i.e. including the header files. For building the application 'ssl' the OpenSSL binary command program 'openssl' is also needed.
At least version 0.9.7 of OpenSSL is required.Sun Java jdk-1.5.0 Or higher. Optional but needed for building the Erlang/OTP application 'jinterface' and parts of 'ic' and 'orber'. We have also tested IBM's JDK 1.5.0.
X Windows Optional, but development headers and libraries are needed to build the Erlang/OTP application 'gs' on Unix/Linux.
sed There seem to be some problems with some of the 'sed' version on Solaris. Make sure "/bin/sed" or "/usr/bin/sed" is used on the Solaris platform.
Flex Optional, headers and libraries are needed to build the flex scanner for the megaco application on Unix/Linux.
An 'install' program that can take multiple file names.
If you are building in a Git reposistory, see
http://wiki.github.com/erlang/otp
The following instructions are for building using the source tar ball.
Start by unpacking the Erlang/OTP distribution file with your GNU compatible TAR
1) gunzip -c otp_src_R13B03.tar.gz | tar xf - 1) zcat otp_src_R13B03.tar.gz | tar xf -
Now cd into the base directory
2) cd otp_src_R13B03
On some platforms Perl may behave strangely if certain locales are set, so optionally you may need to set the LANG variable:
3a) LANG=C; export LANG #Bourne shell or 3b) setenv LANG C #C-shell
Run the following commands
4a) ./configure [ options ]
or
4b) ./configure --prefix=
By default, Erlang/OTP will be installed in /usr/local/{bin,lib/erlang,man/man1}.
To instead install in
If you upgraded the source with some patch you may need to clean up from previous builds before the new build. Do a "make clean"; see "Caveats" below.
5) make 6) make install
Let's go through them in some detail:
Step 4 runs a configuration script 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" for details.
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,man/man1}; to keep the same structure but install in a different place,
This step will also configure any additional libraries unpacked in step 3 (if you didn't add any of the extra libraries configure will issue a warning saying that there is no configuration information in lib; this warning can safely be ignored).
You can also specify where the OpenSSL include and library files are located, or alternatively disable the use of SSL and Crypto. (The details can be found by typing './configure --help'.)
Other options are:
--enable-smp-support See the next section.
--disable-smp-support See the next section.
--disable-threads Disable support for threaded I/O;
this option also disables building
of the SMP emulator. (See the next section.)
--enable-threads Enable support for threaded I/O.
(This is the default if SMP support is enabled.
See the next section.)
--disable-hipe Disable HiPE (High-Performance Erlang).
HiPE will automatically be enabled on
supported platforms.
Step 5 builds the Erlang/OTP system. On a fast computer,this will take about 5 minutes. After completion of this step, you should have a working Erlang/OTP system which you can try by typing "bin/erl". This should start up Erlang/OTP and give you a prompt.
Step 6 is optional. It installs Erlang/OTP (if you change yourmind about where you wish to install you can rerun step 4, without having to do step 5 again).
The source tree 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.
NOTE: 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 doing 'make clean' will ensure that it will be possible to build after doing 'make clean'. './otp_build save_bootstrap' will be invoked automatically when 'make' is invoked from ERL_TOP with either the clean target, or the default target. It is also automatically invoked if './otp_build remove_prebuilt_files' is invoked.
If you or your system has special requirements please read the Makefile for additional configuration information.
An emulator with SMP support will be built by default on most platforms if a usable POSIX thread library or native Windows threads is found.
You can force building of an SMP emulator, by using "./configure --enable-smp-support". However, if configure doesn't automatically enable SMP support, the build is very likely to fail.
Use "./configure --disable-smp-support" if you for some reason don't want to have the emulator with SMP support built.
If SMP support is enabled, support for threaded I/O will also be turned on (also in the emulator without SMP support).
The 'erl' command will automatically start the SMP emulator if the computer has more than one logical processor. You can force a start of the emulator with SMP support by passing '-smp enable' as command line arguments to erl, and you can force a start of the emulator without SMP support by passing '-smp disable'.
For some graphical tools to find the on-line help you have to install the HTML documentation on top of the installed OTP applications, i.e.
cd <PrefixDir>/lib/erlang
gunzip -c otp_html_R<XY>B-<Z>.tar.gz | tar xf -For "erl -man
cd <PrefixDir>/lib/erlang
gunzip -c otp_man_R<XY>B-<Z>.tar.gz | tar xf -GS now Tcl/Tk 8.4. It will be searched for when starting GS.
HiPE supports the following system configurations:
x86: All 32-bit and 64-bit mode processors should work.
The following systems are supported:
Linux:
Fedora Core is supported.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit modes are supported.
NPTL glibc is strongly preferred, or a LinuxThreads
glibc configured for "floating stacks". Old non-floating
stacks glibcs have a fundamental problem that makes HiPE
support and threads support mutually exclusive.
Solaris:
Solaris 10 (32-bit and 64-bit) and 9 (32-bit) are
supported.
The build requires a version of the GNU C compiler (gcc)
that has been configured to use the GNU assembler (gas).
Sun's x86 assembler is emphatically /not/ supported.
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD 6.1 and 6.2 in 32-bit and 64-bit modes should work.
MacOSX/Darwin:
Darwin 9.8.0 in 32-bit mode should work.PowerPC: All 32-bit 6xx/7xx(G3)/74xx(G4) processors should work. 32-bit mode on 970 (G5) and POWER5 processors should work.
Linux (Yellow Dog) and Mac OSX 10.4 are supported.SPARC: All UltraSPARC processors running 32-bit user code should work.
Solaris 9 and Linux (Aurora) are supported.
On Solaris the build requires a gcc that has been configured
to use Sun's assembler and linker. Using the GNU assembler but
Sun's linker has been known to cause problems.ARM: ARMv5TE (i.e. XScale) processors should work. Both big-endian and little-endian modes are supported.
Linux is supported.HiPE is automatically enabled on the following systems: x86 in 32-bit mode: Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD x86 in 64-bit mode: Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD PowerPC: Linux, MacOSX SPARC: Linux ARM: Linux On other supported systems you need to "./configure --enable-hipe".
If you are running on a platform supporting HiPE and if you have not disabled HiPE, you can compile a module into native code like this from the Erlang shell:
c(Module, native).or
c(Module, [native|OtherOptions]).Using the erlc program, write like this:
erlc +native Module.erlThe native code will be placed into the beam file and automatically loaded when the beam file is loaded.
To add hipe options, write like this from the Erlang shell:
c(Module, [native,{hipe,HipeOptions}|MoreOptions]).Use
hipe:help_options().to print out the available options.
We test Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger) and Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) in our daily builds (but only on Intel processors).
Make sure that the command "hostname" returns a valid fully qualified host name (this is configured in "/etc/hostconfig").
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.
Universal 32bit binaries can be built on an Intel Mac using the --enable-darwin-universal configure option. There still may occur problems with certain applications using this option, but the base system should run smoothly.
When building universal binaries on a PowerPC Mac (at least on Tiger), you must point out a suitable SDK that contains universal binaries. For instance, to build universal binaries for Tiger (10.4):
CFLAGS="-isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk" LDFLAGS="-isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk" ./configure --enable-darwin-universal
Also, if you run Leopard, but want to build for Tiger, you must do
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.4
before running the above configure command.
Experimental support for 64bit x86 darwin binaries can be enabled using the --enable-darwin-64bit configure flag. The 64bit binaries are best built and run on Leopard, but most of the system also works on Tiger (Tiger's 64bit libraries are, however, limited; therefore e.g. odbc, crypto, ssl etc. are not supported in Tiger). 64bit PPC binaries are not supported and we have no plans to add such support (no machines to test on).
Universal binaries and 64bit binaries are mutually exclusive options.
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=
where
Authors are mostly listed in the application's AUTHORS files, that is $ERL_TOP/lib/*/AUTHORS and $ERL_TOP/erts/AUTHORS, not in the individual source files.
More information can be found at http://www.erlang.org.