Quick Start

1 Getting Set Up

1.1 Dependencies

First and foremost, you will need Erlang installed. On Mac OS X, this is as easy as executing brew install erlang or on Ubuntu apt-get install erlang. You can also install Erlang from the various pre-built packages provided on the official Erlang download page or from the Erlang Solutions page (supports many more package types).

If you will be using rebar to build LFE, you'll need to get that too.

You will need to download git or install it using your favorite package manager.

Next, you will need to download LFE itself:

$ git clone git://github.com/rvirding/lfe.git

1.2 Building

With the dependencies installed, we're now ready to build LFE.

1.2.1 Using make

$ cd ./lfe
$ erlc -o src src/lfe_scan.xrl
$ make

Ordinarily, only the make command would be necessary. However, there's currently an issue with the Makefile that temporarily requires that first step.

1.2.2 Using rebar

Alternatively, one may use rebar to build LFE:

$ cd ./lfe
$ rebar compile

1.3 Installing

On non-development systems, or any system where you don't want to run LFE from a git checkout, installing system-wide is the preferred way to use LFE. If you set your $ERL_LIBS environment variable, LFE will install there. Here's how one might do this on a Mac OS X system with Erlang installed by Homebrew:

$ export ERL_LIBS=/usr/local/lib/erlang/lib
$ make install

You can then check that everything is where you expect:

$ ls -1 $ERL_LIBS|grep lfe
lfe-0.7

Now you can use LFE from anywhere:

$ erl
Erlang R15B03 (erts-5.9.3.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:0]
[hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]

Eshell V5.9.3.1  (abort with ^G)
1> lfe_shell:start().
LFE Shell V5.9.3.1 (abort with ^G)
<0.33.0>
>