Setup for Hacking on Mix Source Code

Hello everyone,

I am trying to hack on the Elixir source code, particularly in the mix project itself.

Normally, if this was my own project, I can see the effects of my code changes by running iex -S mix after I’ve made changes. What would be the equivalent setup when editing the source of projects like mix, elixir, etc?

Ideally, what I would like is to be able to use my modified version of mix in a test / throwaway project so that I can iterate on the code, but I’m open to how someone with more experience than me does this.

Thank you!

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Point the first item in your path to the bin file in the Elixir source code.

export PATH=“$HOME/elixir/bin:$PATH”

That might be wrong. I use fish shell these days and have forgotten the exact details.
I’d put this and any other setup commands in a shell script that ran a subshell.

Call it test_mix.

#!/bin/sh
env PATH=“$HOME/elixir/bin:$PATH” /bin/bash

If you want to get super fancy, you can use a tool that reads a special file in your current directory
and does the env setup for you. I like this one

but there are a couple others that are good as well.

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Worked like a charm. Thank you!