basics:

• OS: FreeBSD everywhere desktop laptop & servers
• FreeBSD jails and zfs snapshots for lighweight testing and deployment
• dtrace on FreeBSD and recon for debugging and tracing BEAM apps live. I’ve never needed pry & friends.
• haproxy on my computer to redirect http requests and databases to whatever jail is actually running at that time
• urxvt terminals appropriately titled for the task at hand, i3 for window manager, fish shell
• devel/zeal: an offline docs browsing tool
• git-cola: super graphical git commit tool for unix

BEAM

• lang/elixir, rebar, rebar3, mix, hex all installed from FreeBSD packages
• installed lang/erlang, erlang-runtime19, erlang-runtime20, lang-erlang-runtime21 all from packages (yes you can have them concurrently installed)
• I switch between the erlang versions with a simple set PATH /usr/local/lib/erlang20/bin $PATH where needed. I cannot tell you how nice this is.
• the packages are upgraded regularly usually 1-2 days after official OTP and elixir releases so you’re always patched without stress

editor

• neovim with vim-plug, alchemist, vim-mix, vim-mix-format, network, a bunch of std tpope vim plugins (commentary, fugitive, sensible, projectionist), all the vim-erlang/* plugins, rainbow, vim-better-whitespace, ctrlp
• I also have intellij-ultimate which I use for “larger” project management - moving stuff between files, its nice to use the mouse with tabs and many files sometimes

comms

• irc via irccloud.com or hexchat
• slack & hipchat for work-related stuff

workflow

I typically have a couple of windows open - a running elixir app on the left pane in a while loop, so I just need to ctrl-C to have it restart if needed.

mix clean; while mix format
  iex --name hive --cookie yum -S mix
  clear
end

and in that one I use ConCache to “copy” interesting data from the running program into the iex repl to play with. I often have network ports and pids in the values, so having real ones to play with is critical. this looks like this:

iex(hive@wintermute.skunkwerks.at)4> conn = ConCache.get(:webhook_cache, :req) 
%Plug.Conn{
  adapter: {Plug.Adapters.Cowboy.Conn,
   {:http_req, #Port<0.1471292>, :ranch_tcp, :keepalive, #PID<0.18751.0>,
    "POST", :"HTTP/1.1", ...

iex(hive@wintermute.skunkwerks.at)6> conn |> Plug.Conn.get_req_header("x-real-ip")

You can then do all the nice stuff right there in the repl! When I have the rough form of the desired function or module working, I switch over to vim in the right side window, write tests around my desired behaviour, throw in the code from IEx into a module, and profit.

The conn above is captured using a little Plug I shift around inside the app while I’m fiddling:

defmodule CapnHook.Debug do
  @moduledoc """
  Pretty Print the conn with nice colours
  """

  @highlighting [number: :yellow, atom: :cyan, string: :green, nil: :magenta, boolean: :magenta]

  use Plug.Builder

  def call(conn, _opts) do
    ConCache.put(:webhook_cache, :conn, conn)
    IO.inspect(conn, label: __MODULE__, syntax_colors: @highlighting, width: 0)
    conn
  end
end

In my final pane, I run a syslog tail on top, and a small window on bottom with mix test --trace --no-deps-check --stale until it’s all good.

then switch over to git-cola, order some smaller commits, do the distillery dance to produce a release, and I have a small script that turns that tarball into a deployable FreeBSD package.

If anybody’s interested in more details, message me, and I’ll spin this into an actual blog post.

For Mac OSX (High Sierra)

Homebrew & Postgresql

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew doctor
brew install postgresql
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/postgresql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
brew services start postgresql
createuser -s postgres

Elixir/Erlang

For Erlang/Elixir, the same asdf procedure as @ConnorRigby, but with

asdf install erlang 21.0.7
asdf global erlang 21.0.7
asdf install elixir 1.7.3-otp-21
asdf global elixir 1.7.3-otp-21

and for Mac, You need to

echo -e '\n. $HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo -e '\n. $HOME/.asdf/completions/asdf.bash' >> ~/.bash_profile

Phoenix

For 1.4, not yet released

From anywhere in your disk, where You have your Elixir source code

git clone https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix
cd phoenix/installer
MIX_ENV=prod mix do archive.build, archive.install
cd ../../

Nothing fancy, just using README for each used tools. I also install node, yarn for the full Elixir environment.

PS. I also install XCode as a pre-requisite for the Mac.

Macbook air(8GB RAM, 128GB Storage) with MacOS High Sierra

• iterm 2 as Terminal emulator
• Tmux in production env
• Fish shell
• asdf Version Manager
  • Elixir plugin
  • Erlang plugin
• VS Code
  • Better Comments
  • EEx snippets
  • vscode-database
  • vscode-elixir
• Dash - API Documentation Browser
• Pocket
• MacDown
• pgcli for database
• fork - as github gui