Is it possible to reload a pristine version of a rewritten module?

Hello my fellow companions,

lets say I have a module like so deployed and running:

defmodule MyModule do
  def return_a do
    "a"
  end
end

Then, someone comes and remotes into my running app and redefines it to:

defmodule MyModule do
  def return_a do
    "b"
  end
end

Is there a way to reload its original version from the .beam files and remove said modification?

I believe you’re looking for l/1.

You can execute the above in a remote session to purge the “redefined” module and then reload the original from the .beam files.

❯ _build/prod/rel/test/bin/test remote
Erlang/OTP 25 [erts-13.1.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [ds:8:8:10] [async-threads:1] [jit] [dtrace]

Interactive Elixir (1.14.1) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(test@mac)1> Test.hello
:world
iex(test@mac)2> defmodule Test do
...(test@mac)2> def hello do
...(test@mac)2> :edited
...(test@mac)2> end
...(test@mac)2> end
{:module, Test,
 <<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 5, 40, 66, 69, 65, 77, 65, 116, 85, 56, 0, 0, 0, 176,
   0, 0, 0, 18, 11, 69, 108, 105, 120, 105, 114, 46, 84, 101, 115, 116, 8, 95,
   95, 105, 110, 102, 111, 95, 95, 10, 97, ...>>, {:hello, 0}}
iex(test@mac)3> Test.hello
:edited
iex(test@mac)4> l(Test)
{:module, Test}
iex(test@mac)5> Test.hello
:world
iex(test@mac)6> 
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