How to make an Elixir library available to erlang users?

A bit off-topic, but some erlang programmers would want to avoid using any elixir libs because elixir needs to include it’s standard library at runtime, so if someone wants their library to be used by all languages on beam, it might be better to write it in erlang. In your case though it probably doesn’t matter, since it’s a benchmarking library.

Should they avoid it for that reason, then their loss It’s also not used at run time, so there is no impact on the runtime release that gets distributed

The library has a non trivial code base by now so I’m not gonna rewrite, just trying to be a good BEAM citizen.

I believe you need something like rebar3_mix or rebar3_elixir for it to work. Try pinging t_slought/tristan or alisdair on elixir-lang IRC channel.

Thanks, will do/try!

Update: Thanks to @josevalim ( ) I found rebar3_elixir_compile which seems to do what I want it to with the following configuration:

{deps, [
  {benchee, {elixir, "benchee", "0.8.0"}}
  %% {benchee, {git, "git://github.com/PragTob/benchee.git"}}
]}.

{plugins, [
    { rebar3_elixir_compile, ".*", {git, "https://github.com/barrel-db/rebar3_elixir_compile.git", {branch, "master"}}}
]}.

{provider_hooks, [
  {pre, [{compile, {ex, compile}}]},
  {pre, [{release, {ex, compile}}]}
]}.

{elixir_opts,
  [
    {env, dev}
  ]
}.

It fetches all dev dependencies atm and values other than the dev environment don’t seem to work. Will ask there. Seems to work now:

tobi@speedy ~/github/benchee_erlang $ rebar3 shell
===> Verifying dependencies...
===> Upgrading benchee ({elixir,"benchee","0.8.0"})
Dependency benchee already exists

Running dependency resolution...
All dependencies up to date
===> App bunt is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App credo is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App deep_merge is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App dialyxir is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App earmark is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App ex_doc is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App fs is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> App mix_test_watch is no longer needed and can be deleted.
===> Compiling benchee_erlang
===> Adding Elixir Libs
Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.1] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V8.1  (abort with ^G)
1> 'Elixir.Benchee':init().
#{'__struct__' => 'Elixir.Benchee.Suite',
  configuration => #{'__struct__' => 'Elixir.Benchee.Configuration',
    assigns => #{},
    formatter_options => #{console => #{comparison => true,unit_scaling => best}},
    formatters => [#Fun<Elixir.Benchee.Formatters.Console.output.1>],
    inputs => nil,
    parallel => 1,
    print => #{benchmarking => true,configuration => true,fast_warning => true},
    time => 5000000,
    warmup => 2000000},
  jobs => #{},
  run_times => nil,
  statistics => nil,
  system => nil}

Thanks a lot!

If someone has other ideas/ways please still let me know

It might be time for a new thread on this but I am wonder what the resolution to this thread was. What is the best way to

a) use Elixir libs from an erlang project
b) structure an Elixir project so it is easy to use from erlang

I think rebar3_elixir_compile is still the goto solution. Albeit no one ever responded to the issues I created but there have been some updates.

My test repo works some of the time - albeit I also needed to escriptize and I’m not too familiar with rebar3/escriptize so others might to a better job than me.

From my perspective for use cases such as benchee (i.e. you don’t need something at runtime but rather just a tool) it’s easiest/most reliable to just install elixir use the library and then call to erlang code from there. I’d be happy for a better solution though.

At Lambdadays I talked quickly with Michał and José and it sounded like it’d be nice to do something to make it easier and that it shouldn’t be that hard but also not a top priority right now.

Thanks for the test repo. I hope it is something that can be prioritised soon. I would really like to see the beam community as people like to call it become more cohesive

Thanks @PragTob! I want to clarify that people should not expect the Elixir team to solve this. We already do all of the work to ensure you can use rebar/rebar3/make from Mix, the other direction is not quite up to us but rather to people using those other build tools. We will be glad to answer any questions or improve Elixir if necessary but it is up to the community to tackle the problem together.

rebar_mix GitHub - Supersonido/rebar_mix: rebar3 plugin for building Elixir dependencies with mix · GitHub is the newer solution that handles transitive deps.