niku

niku

Deployment an elixir project with using TravisCI

I have published an elixir project with using Travis CI.
I would like to share some tips & thoughts that I was getting through this experience. I will be happy if it helps you.

.travis.yml

Here is an .travis.yml in an elixir project. You have to set HEX_ENCRYPTED_KEY and HEX_PASSPHRASE to environment variables in TravisCI.

  • Every time I push a commit
    • Execute mix credo as linter
    • Execute mix dialyzer as statical type checker
    • Execute mix test
  • Every time I push a tag
    • First, same as pushing a commit. When it pass the checkings, it will deploy project to hex.pm and its document to hexdocs.pm
    • No write key and passphrase to logs in TravisCI
  • To build faster
language: elixir
sudo: false
otp_release:
  - 19.3
elixir:
  - 1.4.2
env:
  global:
    - HEX_USERNAME=niku
    # Follow other language's environment
    # e.g.) `RACK_ENV=test` has been setted as Default Environment Variables
    # https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/environment-variables/#Default-Environment-Variables
    - MIX_ENV=test
cache:
  directories:
    - _build
    - deps
script:
  - mix credo --strict
  # https://github.com/jeremyjh/dialyxir#command-line-options
  # > exit immediately with same exit status as dialyzer. useful for CI
  - mix dialyzer --halt-exit-status
  - mix test
deploy:
   # https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/deployment/script/
   # > `script` must be a scalar pointing to an executable file or command.
   provider: script
   # http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2779048
   # `>-` indicates the line folding.
   script: >-
     mix deps.get &&
     mix hex.config username "$HEX_USERNAME" &&
     (mix hex.config encrypted_key "$HEX_ENCRYPTED_KEY" > /dev/null 2>&1) &&
     (echo "$HEX_PASSPHRASE"\\nY | mix hex.publish) &&
     mix clean &&
     mix deps.clean --all
   on:
    tags: true

tips & thoughts

A package with a specific version in hex.pm could not be updated except for one hour since its creation. I didn’t realize it.

A ruby project on TravisCI, RAILS_ENV=test and RACK_ENV=test are available to all builds. To get a similar behavior at an elixir project on TravisCI, you should set MIX_ENV=test to the global environment variable.

You can write only a scalar variable a deploy - script section. You have to use multiline syntax for yaml if you want to write scripts which have multiple inline lines. When you use >, it doesn’t work well because it includes the last line feed ( \n ). Instead, you have to use >- to write it which doesn’t include the last line feed ( \n ).
Related YAML spec:
8.1.1.2. Block Chomping Indicator,
8.1.3. Folded Style

For security reasons, you mustn’t write any encrypted_key to the CI log which anyone can read. Hoyouver mix hex.config key value writes its value to STDOUT. So, I have redirected the result of the command to /dev/null.

mix hex.publish requires both an input passphrase and to confirm Code of Conduct. It means you need key input twice. First, It needs the input passphrase. Second, It needs to type Y. So I have to have handled them with STDIN like this: echo "$HEX_PASSPHRASE"\\nY | mix hex.publish.

You need execution mix clean && mix deps.clean --all because of TravisCI executes git stash after a script evaluates. You will get an error like: Could not restore untracked files from stash if you don’t clean up.

Most Liked

bitwalker

bitwalker

Leader

Nice work! I’m tempted to try this out on my projects, though I’m hesitant to have things auto published - that said, I’ve probably made more mistakes during publishing by hand than I would if I got this set up right. Have you considered modifying this to maybe only do this on a tag? Have you looked into GitHub releases at all? It’d be cool to automatically create a release from a tag and set the description to be some subset of a CHANGELOG file showing what was modified.

Thanks for sharing!

spencerdcarlson

spencerdcarlson

This post was very helpful, but I noticed a few things that can be updated.

Accounting for these changes, and using the git clean -f command to address the git stash issue my deploy section ended up being a lot smaller:

deploy:
  provider: script
  script: >-
    mix deps.get &&
    mix hex.publish --yes &&
    git clean -f
  on:
    tags: true

This approach requires that you generate an API key from hex and then set it as travis ci environment variable (HEX_API_KEY)

spencerdcarlson

spencerdcarlson

MacOS Tips

Officially travis does not support elixir for osx (docs):

Elixir builds are not available on the macOS environment.

I was able to use asdf to install elixir on macOS to build and test my hex package.

Here is the link to my .travis.yml if anyone wants to see an example or suggest improvements.

I ended up making all my asdf commands conditional, so I could cache asdf, erlang, and elixir.

If asdf was loaded from cache and I executed an asdf command (i.e. asdf update) it would cause a git log file to get updated (i.e ~/.asdf/.git/logs/<HEAD | FETCH | etc>) which would trigger a patch and re-upload of the cache on every build. Checking for cache before executing asdf commands resolved this issue.

There is probably a better way to do this. Maybe only cache the required asdf directories (~/.asdf/<installs && plugins && shims>), or clone asdf in a way that doesn’t cause any git tracking to function (clone bare?). idk, I didn’t explore those options very much.

Another issue I ran into, was if my .tool-versions file had my erlang version on the first line and my elixir version on the second line, then asdf install would only install erlang, but fail to install elixir. I have no idea why, but switching the order resolved this. I also added a travis_wait to the asdf_install to avoid timeouts on the erlang install.

A cache miss build will take ~11 min while a build that uses the cache takes about ~1 min

Here is and example of my environment variable setup for Hex regarding the above post

Where Next?

Popular in Guides/Tuts Top

tfwright
I thought I’d share a small project I’m working on to gain some familiarty with LiveView in a Phoenix app. Github Repo Deployment It’s...
New
bluegene
Hi guys, I’ve been on a personal journey to learn Elixir for the past two years. During this journey I’ve been using the spaced repetiti...
New
ben-pr-p
https://github.com/ben-pr-p/elixir-phoenix-parcel-example Hey all! I put together a starter-pack / instructions to set up Phoenix with t...
New
annad
I’m posting this for developers who are totally new to Phoenix like myself. This is all probably obvious to more skilled Phoenix develope...
New
egze
I was preparing to deploy a production application to AWS Fargate, and to practice I wanted to play with DNS polling and node discovery o...
New
siever
I just wrote a simple guide on how you can setup a productive elixir development environment in vim. Its really easy, just a few steps. ...
New
nelsonic
Complete beginners Todo List Tutorial in Phoenix 1.5.3 (latest and greatest): https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-todo-list-tutorial It’s a...
New
bitli
In case this is handy for other people, here is how you can run Elixir on Android: Install https://termux.com/ apt update; apt upgrade ...
New
TwistingTwists
This is a thread to note down things/best practices encountered in LiveBeats App as I explore the source code. https://github.com/fly-...
New
anuragg
We just published a guide to automatic clustering in Elixir 1.9, with Mix releases and libcluster. The cluster automatically discovers n...
New

Other popular topics Top

sen
Hi All, I set a environment variables in dev.exs , like below code. when i start server, how can i set the ${enable} value? thanks. d...
New
albydarned
Hello all! I am typing this post from my new MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. I’m loving it so far, and will probably use it as my daily dr...
New
Nvim
Anybody knows a comprehensive comparison of Django and Phoenix, thanks for the help. Where are they similar? Where do they differ the m...
New
Patoshizzle
After calling mix ecto.create I get this error: 17:00:32.162 [error] GenServer #PID&lt;0.412.0&gt; terminating ** (Postgrex.Error) FATAL...
New
Qqwy
Original source of discussion: This topic on the Pragmatic Programmers’ Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix forum. ...
New
shijith.k
I am trying to start a new phoenix project with elixir 1.9, but mix phx.new does not work. It says that ** (Mix) The task "phx.new" could...
New
AstonJ
We’ve put together this wiki for Phoenix LiveView - please feel free to add any info you feel is worth including. What is Phoenix LiveV...
New
hariharasudhan94
I would like to know what is the best IDE for elixir development?
New
AstonJ
Seen any cool LiveView demos, sample apps or examples? Please post them here! :003:
New
jononomo
For some reason my phoenix channels are working for me in my local dev environment, but as soon as I deploy via Docker, I get a 403 error...
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement