Development Setup

rebar3 Configuration

Having followed the notes and linked instructions in the Prerequisites section, you are ready to add global support for the LFE rebar3 plugin.

First, unless you have configured other rebar3 plugins on your system, you will need to create the configuration directory and the configuration file:

$ mkdir ~/.config/rebar3
$ touch ~/.config/rebar3/rebar.config

Next, open up that file in your favourite editor, and give it these contents:

{plugins, [
  {rebar3_lfe, "0.4.8"}
]}.

If you already have a rebar.config file with a plugins entry, then simply add a comma after the last plugin listed and paste the {rebar3_lfe, ...} line from above (with no trailing comma!). When a new version of rebar3_lfe is released, you can follow the instructions in the rebar3_lfe repo to upgrade.

For Windows users

Some notes on compatibility:

While LFE, Erlang, and rebar3 work on *NIX, BSD, and Windows systems, much of the development the community does occurs predominently on the first two and sometimes Windows support is spotty and less smooth than on the more used platforms (this is more true for rebar3 and LFE, and _most_ true for LFE).

In particular, starting a REPL in Windows can take a little more effort (an extra step or two) than it does on, for example, Linux and Mac OS X machines.

A Quick Test with the REPL

With the LFE rebar3 plugin successfully configured, you should be able to start up the LFE REPL anywhere on your system with the following:

$ rebar3 lfe repl

Erlang/OTP 23 [erts-11.0] [source] [64-bit] [smp:16:16] [ds:16:16:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe]

   ..-~.~_~---..
  (      \\     )    |   A Lisp-2+ on the Erlang VM
  |`-.._/_\\_.-':    |   Type (help) for usage info.
  |         g |_ \   |
  |        n    | |  |   Docs: http://docs.lfe.io/
  |       a    / /   |   Source: http://github.com/rvirding/lfe
   \     l    |_/    |
    \   r     /      |   LFE v1.3-dev (abort with ^G)
     `-E___.-'

lfe>

Exit out of the REPL for now by typing <CTRL><G> and then <Q>.

For Windows users

On Windows, this currently puts you into the Erlang shell, not the LFE REPL. To continue to the LFE REPL, you will need to enter lfe_shell:server(). and then press <ENTER>.