Elixir installation guide

Version numbers should be the ones you want. Here I do it with the last ones available at the moment of writing.

The simplest way to install elixir is using your package manager. Sadly, at the time of writing only Fedora shows the intention to keep its packages up to date. There you can simply sudo dnf install erlang elixir and you are good to go.

Anyway, if you intend to work with several versions of erlang or elixir at the same time, or you are tied to a specific version, you will need to compile it yourself. Then asdf is your best friend.

Install needed system packages

Fedora

sudo dnf install make automake gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel git wget openssl-devel ncurses-devel wxBase3 wxGTK3-devel m4

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential git wget libssl-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev m4 curl wx-common libwxgtk3.0-dev autoconf

Optional Erlang dependencies

If you want Erlang to generate its docs when compiling, or if you need the jinterface or the ODBC applications, then you may need to install some extra dependencies. The Erlang compilation script simply skips these if dependencies are not met, so all of this is optional. For Ubuntu and derivatives these dependencies seem to be the java and javac to be installed, and:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-utils xsltproc fop unixodbc unixodbc-bin unixodbc-dev

Install asdf and its plugins

asdf lives in https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf

Follow its installation instructions, which at the moment of writing were:

cd
git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf --branch v0.7.0

# For Ubuntu or other linux distros
echo '. $HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh' >> ~/.bashrc
echo '. $HOME/.asdf/completions/asdf.bash' >> ~/.bashrc

On a new terminal, install Erlang and Elixir plugins:

asdf plugin-add erlang
asdf plugin-add elixir

Install Erlang and Elixir

asdf install erlang 21.1
asdf install elixir 1.7.4

Then set them as the global version:

asdf global erlang 21.1
asdf global elixir 1.7.4

Now you can open a new terminal and try erl:

$ erl
Erlang/OTP 21 [erts-9.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [ds:4:4:10] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V9.3  (abort with ^G)
1> 

Or start Erlang Observer by erl -s observer start.

And you can try 'iex':

$ iex
Erlang/OTP 21 [erts-9.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [ds:4:4:10] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Interactive Elixir (1.7.4) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(1)>

Use asdf .tool-versions file to manage which version is active on each of your projects.

Enjoy!