[erlang-questions] Ways to get started

[Garrett Smith]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:41 AM,  <pmacgown@REDACTED> wrote:
> I get Erlang. That's the easy part.  It's just the underlying development
> structure and environment that gets in my way.

I hit the same issue. I went so far as to pick up Emacs. I have to
say, I'm quite happy with the result, but that's a pretty big pill to
swallow when you want to simply add Erlang to your repertoire.

And you don't *have* to use Emacs. But for me it was the path of least
resistance.

I'd be curious to know what editor/IDE/toolset people use other than
Emacs. Catch is, you have to be overall happy with it :)

> Is there a real 101 that can give me a leg up?  Really basic questions like:
>
> How do I get Erlang from github?  Where do I put it once I get it?

Use a system package (e.g. aptitude, yum, pacman) or a mainstream
installer. I wouldn't mess with compiling from scratch, much less
getting source from github.

> How does rebar fit into this picture?

Rebar is emerging as the de facto standard for building Erlang
projects. Most projects that use rebar also provide a Makefile, but I
wouldn't worry about make files in your case. There are a few good
"getting started" guides with rebar. I'd start with those.

> What does a development cycle look like using these tools?

The most basic work flow is to use an editor to modify your Erlang
source files and then run your compilation ("rebar compile") in a
separate shell. It gets more streamlined from there depending on the
toolset.

Garrett