Been away from elixir for a while and tried to create a new phoenix app but run into troubles compiling mint.
I get a large number of problems similar to the one example below (10+ can provide if needed) and then the text telling me it could not compile.
mix phx.server
==> mint
Compiling 1 file (.erl)
src/mint_shims.erl:37:14: can't find include lib "public_key/include/public_key.hrl"
% 37| -include_lib("public_key/include/public_key.hrl").
% | ^
could not compile dependency :mint, "mix compile" failed. Errors may have been logged above. You can recompile this dependency with "mix deps.compile mint", update it with "mix deps.update mint" or clean it with "mix deps.clean mint"
The entire mashine is a brand new Windows Ubuntu wsl so everything is up to date. I did try to update and compile mint separately but I run into the same problem.
I suppose that it might not be a phoenix specific problem but I’m a bit rusty on the whole thing so I thought I start where the error occur. Where can I start to solve this issue?
Are you using the latest mint? And the latest Erlang (27.something) / Elixir (1.8.3)? After that is checked, I would start with this just to make sure:
I tried exlixir -v and as I understand I seem to use Erlang 25 and Elixir 1.14.
I installed it all fresh yesterday minutes after creating the machine so it would be unfortunate if the current Elixir package lags three Erlang versions behind?
Do yourself a favor and just never use native Linux packages for this. Very few distros keep up with them properly (Manjaro comes to mind). Uninstall Erlang & Elixir from your package manager.
mise install erlang@27.3.3
mise install elixir@1.18.3-otp-27
mise use -g erlang@27.3.3
mise use -g elixir@1.18.3-otp-27
The last two just set the default versions of Erlang and Elixir so you don’t have to set them per project (though you can do that as well inside each individual project’s directory, just remove the -g switch from the use command).
Mind you, I have no idea if Erlang/Elixir versions are your problem. But it’s a good starting point to make sure you are where almost everybody else is first.
It did solve my current issue but of cause there is a new one instead. But thank you for clearing this out.
One thing for anyone following this advice in the future. I had to run mise use -g erlang@27.3.3
before I ran mise install elixir@1.18.3-otp-27
otherwise I would get some erlang does not exist issue
I’ve thought a bit about this answer and while it is not an actual description of how to solve the issue. It is a good example of the threshold of development. To navigate dependencies and what tools to use.
I could make use of that thread but someone with less experience would just be confused
To summarize the problem/solution, in this thread, for future reference:
Elixir and Erlang are both languages that run on the BEAM VM, but the BEAM is (primarily) installed on systems by installing Erlang/OTP. The Elixir compiler itself is (currently) written in Erlang. So, you will generally need to install Erlang before you can install a working Elixir.
In this instance, the -otp-27 part of mise install elixir@1.18.3-otp-27 indicates that you want a version of Elixir that can compile with an instance of Erlang/OTP that is version 27, hence the need to mise install erlang@27.x first.
Elixir is commonly installed precompiled. By default those precompiled elixir versions are compiled using the oldest supported otp version. With beam files being forward compatible you can use those compiled beam files with all officially supported otp versions.
This means elixir can only depend on otp features of that oldest otp version though. Sometimes elixir does enable integration with such new features behind compile time flags though, so that given a new enough otp version at compile time those integrations will become available. That‘s what those -otp-xx tags state - getting a precompiled elixir installation compiled with the OTP version of the tag potentially enabling integration with features of that or older otp versions.
In that process no files of elixir would be compiled locally - though compiling from source is always possible.
Now being able to install elixir doesn‘t meant it can run by itself. That‘s where a locally installed erlang starts to be required.
