Make elixir app recompile and reload on source code change

Question

How to automatically recompile and reload my iex + mix application every time I modify the source code?

If there's no way for iex + mix combination to do that, what's the easiest alternative? I've checked phoenix's way to do reload, and it doesn't seems easy to implement for my small test project.

I also know about José's .iex.exs :

defmodule R do
  def reload! do
    Mix.Task.reenable "compile.elixir"
    Application.stop(Mix.Project.config[:app])
    Mix.Task.run "compile.elixir"
    Application.start(Mix.Project.config[:app], :permanent)
  end
end

And I'm not extremely happy since it's not reloading automatically on code change, I still need to type R.reload! on iex.

And.. please help me create "iex" tag on stackoverflow, my reputation is not sufficient :)

I think we had some discussions on elixir-lang-talk mailing list about this. I think even some open source projects came out of it... or was it for mix test.watch? — José Valim, Sep 12 '15 at 22:13
ahh... yes there a few projects on github, I'll test and comeback whether they are working or not. — ardhitama, Sep 13 '15 at 01:49

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 02 '16 at 21:07

15

I think this is what you are looking for: https://github.com/AgilionApps/remix

answered Feb 02 '16 at 21:07

Dennis

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score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '17 at 18:50

13

Currently iex has an internal function to do this:

invoke IEx.Helpers.recompile inside iex console.

answered Apr 10 '17 at 18:50

ardhitama

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You don't need to type the fully qualified command `IEx.Helpers.recompile`, it's enough to just run `recompile` – Zoltán Apr 25 '18 at 09:01
you can just do `iex> r My.Module` – eddy147 Jun 19 '23 at 12:32

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 29 '15 at 17:56

3

Closest thing i know of is in Alchemist for emacs by @tonini. In Alchemist, there's an option to enable

(setq alchemist-hooks-test-on-save t)

which makes it compile and runs tests when you save.

https://github.com/tonini/alchemist.el#testing

answered Sep 29 '15 at 17:56

Theo

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 15 '16 at 18:41

1

For Erlang, I was using "relx -d" together with https://github.com/rustyio/sync The "-d" means that source files are linked using symlinks.

The same works nicely in Elixir. In mix.exs I added :sync in the following two places

  defp deps do
        [{:sync, git: "https://github.com/rustyio/sync.git", tag: "master"}, ....


  def application do
    [applications: [:logger, :sync],

Then, the following command compiles it into a release (before it works, you will have to install hex and exrm).

mix release -dev

Now, when you change a .ex file, and save, it will be recompiled and loaded directly.

19:33:46.474 [info]  ... /apps/testapp1/lib/kv/bucket.ex:0: Recompiled.

You only want sync in your development environment!

answered Mar 15 '16 at 18:41

mattias

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I do not think this could be working right due to: https://github.com/rustyio/sync/issues/56 – Michael Terry Aug 01 '16 at 20:35
1

@Michael Terry yes, same problem here. – Doodloo Oct 20 '16 at 11:55
1

This doesn't work for elixir consistently. Infinite loop mania. – CallMeNorm Mar 09 '17 at 20:12

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 10 '23 at 20:13

1

https://github.com/falood/exsync/ is another library that will automatically recompile your code when the source code changes.

answered Jun 10 '23 at 20:13

Jason Axelson

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Make elixir app recompile and reload on source code change

5 Answers5

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