Quick Start

1 Going Plaid

This guide will give you what you need in order to jump into LFE at ludicrous speed.

For a more gradual introduction (with a bit more Erlang) and for something that's going to give you time to see the stars, checkout the User Guide.

1.1 lfetool

For a quick introduction to LFE, lfetool has everything you need. The Quick Start guide will use it almost exclusively -- all in the interst of sending you a week and a half into the future.

Where appropriate, we will point you to other resources that provide more details.

Let's get started: install lfetool! This puts it in /usr/local/bin:

$ curl -L -o ./lfetool https://raw.github.com/lfe/lfetool/master/lfetool
$ bash lfetool install

If you would like to instal it in a directory of your choosing:

$ bash lfetool install lfetool /opt/scripts/bin

Note that lfetool supports Erlang R15, R16, and 17.0.

If you need sudo to put the script there, be sure to set the ownership:

$ chown $USER /usr/local/bin/lfetool

That way you'll be able to use the update command to get the latest version of lfetool in the future.

1.2 Other 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).

Personally, we prefer to manage our Erlang builds and installations with kerl. This allows for multiple versions of Erlang to be installed on your system simultaneously. For more information about using kerl in LFE projects, be sure to visit the "kerl" section of the User Guide.

You will be using rebar to build LFE under the covers as well as managing dependencies for your projects, so go ahead and get that set up: get rebar.

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

Next Stop

Ready for some LFE? Next you'll learn how to create a new LFE project with just one command ...