dsnipe
Hi all.
I just started a full-time job as a Elixir developer 
.
Previously I worked mostly with Ruby stack and we used a lot Procfile with foreman to start complex applications (e.g. I need to start one job worker, front-end server and the application itself).
Didn’t find anything like this for Elixir projects. Maybe you have tips and/or suggestions how you solve?
Where Next?
Trending in Questions
Other Trending Topics
Latest on Elixir Forum
Sponsor Spotlight
Practical resources that improve the lives of professional developers.
Categories:
Sub Categories:
Forums
Popular Tags
- #ecto
- #liveview
- #troubleshooting
- #learning-elixir
- #library
- #deployment
- #erlang
- #testing
- #genserver
- #mix
- #absinthe
- #remote-other
- #otp
- #plug
- #how-to-question
- #macros
- #postgres
- #elixirconf
- #channels
- #exunit
- #discussion
- #code-sync
- #podcasts
- #javascript
- #onsite
- #dialyzer
- #docker
- #authentication
- #ai
- #umbrella
- #full-time-contract
- #podcasts-by-brainlid
- #blog-post
- #ecto-query
- #elixirconf-us
- #elixir-ls
- #phoenix_html
- #iex
- #graphql
- #genstage
- #websockets
- #supervisor
- #advent-of-code
- #distillery
- #processes
- #elixirconf-eu
- #api
- #forms
- #security
- #hex
Our Sponsors
Build Elixir applications with speed and confidence.
Supporting innovation across the BEAM ecosystem.
We build reliable cloud platforms for business-critical systems.
Catch errors, track performance, monitor hosts and more.
Elixir, Erlang & BEAM conferences from Code Sync - join us in 2026!
Bringing learning, work and compliance together since 1987.
Producing high quality Elixir screencasts since 2017.
**Building the future of software with AI, trust, and human connection.**
The team behind Membrane, Popcorn, LiveDebugger. Available for hire.
Courses that'll move you from confusion to "Aha, now I get it!"
Showing Posts 1 to 9- Show Best Posts
- Show All (oldest first)
- Show All (newest first)
kokolegorille
Well done for the Elixir job
There might be less need for tools like foreman w/ Elixir/Erlang… You could look at the first diagram of mentionned post to understand why.
TL;DR
Starting an Elixir application can start a job worker, a fontend server, the application and much more
dsnipe
Thank you for your answer!
To be honest, I didn’t find an answer for my question. Maybe I missed something.
I understand, that I can replace many things in Elixir which I used in Ruby. But my question is how to run a development environment where I need to run external tools?
Like, in my case, I have one legacy Python application, Python tasks (data analysts tasks) and webpack FE. So I need to run all of them only for dev, because a production deployment is a different story. At the moment there is Makefile, which is not my preferable tool, or I can run everything manually.
kokolegorille
For webpack, it could done in the config/dev.exs, the watchers param.
But I am not aware how to ensure your python apps has started…
outlog
unsure what your python deps are - and what are the production deployment? you could include them in the elixir project..
either way for the dev thing maybe look at how GitHub - joshuafleck/ex_ngrok: A wrapper around Ngrok providing a secure tunnel to localhost for demoing your Elixir/Phoenix web application or testing webhook integrations. · GitHub starts up in the dev env - believe it should be applicable in starting up an external app in dev.. (btw - an abstraction of this could be interesting - lots of us are migrating
)
Architect
You can use a System.cmd to start an application from a mix task
mkunikow
it looks like you could put all stuff in docker compose …
dsnipe
That is how I did actually.
Now I think I can use a watcher (or Mix task) to run it automatically.
Thanks anyway!
axelson
For local development you could also install forego globally and it to start the related application. But the best approach depends on how you are running those related applications in production.
https://github.com/ddollar/forego
outlog
https://shift.infinite.red/foreign-processes-and-phoenix-555179c24151
linked to from here - ex_ngrok/bin/wrap at master · joshuafleck/ex_ngrok · GitHub