Are releases supposed to replace Distillery? If so, are there any particular reasons to switch?
I guess so, I imagine that's up to the maintainer.
The maintainer of Distillery joined the Elixir team to develop releases IIRC.
Elixir 1.9
31–40 of 174 posts
Re: Elixir 1.9
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a good 'why releases' section of the article. Even without the compilation and configuration stuff, it's easier to put the release bundle in something basic like an alpine image, rather than keep docker image versions and app in sync.
But the article says you have to run the release on the same OS/version that you built it on. So if you're running it on alpine, won't you need to build it on alpine, which suggests you'll need to configure your Dockerfile to compile it anyway?
With Distillery you can specify a directory for the ERTS so the release can be built on one OS and run on another. You just have to make sure ERTS was built on the OS that it will eventually run on.
Re: Elixir 1.9
#33This is great news! The deployment story has progressively improved since I started using Elixir in 2016, but the best way is to just have _one_ community blessed system. Distillery has helped a lot for sure, so it's nice that it's basically been rolled into the base elixir distro.
> Distillery has helped a lot for sure, so it's nice that it's basically been rolled into the base elixir distro.
That would be nice if it were true. However, for better or worse, Distillery was Not Invented Here, so what Elixir shipped with today is a reimplementation of the simple half of Distillery.
Re: Elixir 1.9
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a good 'why releases' section of the article. Even without the compilation and configuration stuff, it's easier to put the release bundle in something basic like an alpine image, rather than keep docker image versions and app in sync.
But the article says you have to run the release on the same OS/version that you built it on. So if you're running it on alpine, won't you need to build it on alpine, which suggests you'll need to configure your Dockerfile to compile it anyway?
That is correct. But that can be multiple stages, and therefore separated concerns.
Also, releases can be very small, after all the superfluous parts/symbols are stripped. Combine that with a fresh alpine image and you have quick-to-deploy containers.
Re: Elixir 1.9
#35I know nothing about Elixir/erlang besides following installs for apps. I have used it, installed via ASDF on my Raspberry pi since dependencies weren't up to date.
Can anyone provide a good place to start on where to get started with Elixir?
I tend to learn by working on stuff and not just reading etc, maybe a step by step in elixir? I am going into the literature now as well
Thanks in advance for any help!
Re: Elixir 1.9
#36I know nothing about Elixir/erlang besides following installs for apps. I have used it, installed via ASDF on my Raspberry pi since dependencies weren't up to date. Can anyone provide a good place to start on where to get started with Elixir? I tend to learn by working on stuff and not just reading etc, maybe a step by step in elixir? I am going into the literature now as well Thanks in advance for any help!
I learned by converting a simple Rails API that I had running to do one or two things into a Phoenix API. In my case, it was very eye opening both because it was basic ETL and because it was something that benefited from high concurrency.
I especially recommend this approach because it gives you more or less the most complete cross-section of some basic data structures, some web stuff, and some database stuff via their db adapter of choice, Ecto, which is excellent.
Each part can be a pretty steep (but fairly quick) adjustment depending on your background.
Re: Elixir 1.9
#37Re: Elixir 1.9
#38I know nothing about Elixir/erlang besides following installs for apps. I have used it, installed via ASDF on my Raspberry pi since dependencies weren't up to date. Can anyone provide a good place to start on where to get started with Elixir? I tend to learn by working on stuff and not just reading etc, maybe a step by step in elixir? I am going into the literature now as well Thanks in advance for any help!
Programming Elixir[1] has hands-on exercises throughout. The author also published a video course[2] with exercises.
[1]: https://pragprog.com/book/elixir16/programming-elixir-1-6
[2]: https://codestool.coding-gnome.com/courses/elixir-for-progra...
Re: Elixir 1.9
#39If anyone is on the fence on learning Elixir / Phoenix (Elixir's most popular web framework library) please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you're on a time crunch and want the best bang for your buck on "why bother learning yet another language to write web apps in?" then watch this talk called "The Soul of Erlang and Elixir": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE
I'm not affiliated with the language but I just want to throw out that I've been around since the Geocities era as a web developer and I haven't seen a tech stack or platform this well thought out and so in tune with what makes developing (and testing!) modern web applications an absolute joy. There's really something special here. I see myself sticking with it for 10+ years with 0 regrets.
The best part about it is everything is ready today (and was before 1.9 too btw).
Re: Elixir 1.9
#40If anyone is on the fence on learning Elixir / Phoenix (Elixir's most popular web framework library) please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you're on a time crunch and want the best bang for your buck on "why bother learning yet another language to write web apps in?" then watch this talk called "The Soul of Erlang and Elixir": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE I'm not affiliated with the languag…
That was exactly my thought when I went thru release notes.