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https://github.com/boardwalk/erltest

Erlang example application
https://github.com/boardwalk/erltest

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Erlang example application

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# erltest

Erlang example application. I created this for myself to understand how an Erlang application goes together without Elixir's Mix doing everything for me.

## Directory structure

```
erltest/
Our application's directory. This could also be called Name-VSN if we
cared about versioning.

erltest/src/
All of our Erlang source code.

erltest/src/myapp.erl
Implements the application behavior. Starts a supervisor named 'mysuper'.

erltest/src/mysuper.erl
Implements the supervisor behavior. Starts a child named 'myserver'.

erltest/src/myserver.erl
Implements the gen_server behavior. Doesn't do anything except print on startup.

erltest/ebin/
Compiled source code as .beam files and our .app file.

erltest/ebin/erltest.app
Describes our application. The 'applications' key specifies what applications
must be started before this one. The optional 'mod' key specifies what module
implements the 'application' behavior to start and stop it.

erltest.rel
Describes our release, including all of the applications it contains.
```

## Usage

To compile our source code, we run build-erl:

```
$ ./build-erl
```

This compiles `erltest/src/*.erl` to `erltest/ebin/*.beam`.

To create our boot file, we run build-boot:

```
$ ERL_LIBS=. ./build-boot
```

The creates erltest.script, a script that describes how to start our release as well as erltest.boot, a binary version of the script. We need `ERL_LIBS=.` because Erlang needs to be able to find the erltest.app file of the erltest application we referenced in erltest.rel, and the current directory is not in its load path by default.

To finally bring up our system, we run erl:

```
$ ERL_LIBS=. erl -boot erltest
Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.6] [source] [128-bit] [smp:32:32] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]

myserver init
Eshell V8.6 (abort with ^G)
```

This time we need `ERL_LIBS=.` so Erlang can find our .beam files. `-boot erltest` tells Erlang to execute erltest.boot, which essentially starts the kernel, stdlib, and erltest applications.

Now we stop our application:

```
> application:stop(erltest).
myserver terminate
ok
=INFO REPORT==== 25-Jan-2027::20:47:00 ===
application: erltest
exited: stopped
type: permanent
```

And restart it if we want:

```
> application:start(erltest).
myserver init
ok
```

We can see our supervisor and server running with i:

```
> i().
Pid Initial Call Heap Reds Msgs
Registered Current Function Stack
...
<0.67.0> supervisor:mysuper/1 233 96 0
mysuper gen_server:loop/6 9
<0.68.0> myserver:init/1 233 34 0
myserver gen_server:loop/6 9
...
```

You can talk to the server too:

```
> gen_server:call(myserver, "jabba").
"hello jabba from myserver"
```

That's it! Not too bad.