BEAMUp

A tool for installing languages (support for Gleam, Erlang and Elixir) that run on the Erlang VM (BEAM) and related components -- component support to come in the future.

Install

An install script is provided for both Linux/Mac:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/tsloughter/beamup/releases/download/v0.5.0/beamup-installer.sh | sh

And Windows Powershell:

powershell -c "irm
https://github.com/tsloughter/beamup/releases/download/v0.5.0/beamup-installer.ps1
| iex"

Binaries can also be downloaded from the releases on Github. Or install from source using cargo.

Usage

beamup will store configuration at:

• Linux: ~/.config/beamup/config.toml
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/beamup/config.toml
• Windows: ~\AppData\Local\beamup\config.toml

Local configuration to set a language/component to use in a specific directory is in ./.beamup.toml.

Hard links to the beamup executable for each language command, i.e. gleam, erlc, erl, iex, etc, is created in the following directory:

• Linux: $XDG_BIN_HOME or $XDG_DATA_HOME/../bin or $HOME/.local/bin
• Mac: ~/.beamup/bin
• Windows: ~\.beamup\bin

This directory must be added to your PATH for beamup installs to work.

Installs are currently done to the applications data directory. This defaults to:

• Linux: ~/.local/share/beamup/<language>/<id>
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/beamup/<language>/<id>
• Windows: ~\AppData\Local\beamup\<language>\<id>

For languages that support building from source you can pass additional build options (like what is passed to ./configure for Erlang) with either the environment variable BEAMUP_BUILD_OPTIONS or adding default_build_options to the configuration under the language section:

[erlang]
default_build_options = "--enable-lock-counter"

Or:

BEAMUP_BUILD_OPTIONS="--enable-lock-counter" beamup build erlang -i latest-lock-counter latest

Install Languages

The build command will compile a release and install will fetch a binary release. For Erlang at this time only build is supported and for Gleam and Elixir only install is supported`.

The string latest can be used instead of a release name to get the release marked latest in Github:

$ beamup build erlang latest

$ beamup install gleam latest

$ beamup install elixir latest

See the releases <language> sub-command to see available releases to build/install.

Set Default Version

Assuming you've built OTP-25.3.2.7 you could set the default Erlang to use to it:

$ beamup default erlang OTP-25.3.2.7

Switch Version Used in Directory

Using the switch sub-command either appends to or creates ./.beamup.toml with an entry like erlang = "OTP-25.3.2.7" and running an Erlang command like erl in that directory will use that version instead of the global default.

Other Commands

• releases <language>: List the available releases that can be installed
• update-links: Update the hard links that exists for each language executable

Install Components

The component install command can install binary releases of tools, currently The Erlang Language Platform and rebar3.

The same as with a language you can specify a version of the component to use in the .beamup.toml file in a directory:

rebar3 = "3.23.0"

Differences with Erlup

BEAMUp is the successor to erlup and has important differences. First, the configuration is TOML and not INI, see ~/.config/beamup/config.toml and commands require specifying a language to work on, for example:

$ beamup install gleam v1.3.2

Another key difference is build will work on the tarball of Github releases by default, not clones of tags. Use -b (not supported yet) to install a tag or branch of a repository.

Acknowledgments

Inspiration for erlup is erln8 by Dave Parfitt. He no longer maintains it and I figured I could use writing my own as a way to learn Rust.

The switch to hardlinks instead of symlinks was taken from rustup.