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
– José Valim, Commented Sep 12, 2015 at 22:13
ahh... yes there a few projects on github, I'll test and comeback whether they are working or not. — ardhitama
– ardhitama, Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 1:49

Dennis · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-02 21:07:37Z

15

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

answered Feb 2, 2016 at 21:07

Dennis

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ardhitama · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-10 18:50:44Z

13

Currently iex has an internal function to do this:

invoke IEx.Helpers.recompile inside iex console.

answered Apr 10, 2017 at 18:50

ardhitama

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2 Comments

Zoltán Over a year ago

You don't need to type the fully qualified command IEx.Helpers.recompile, it's enough to just run recompile

eddy147 Over a year ago

you can just do iex> r My.Module

Theo · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-29 17:56:46Z

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, 2015 at 17:56

Theo

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mattias · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-15 18:41:15Z

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, 2016 at 18:41

mattias

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3 Comments

Michael Terry Over a year ago

I do not think this could be working right due to: github.com/rustyio/sync/issues/56

Doodloo Over a year ago

@Michael Terry yes, same problem here.

CallMeNorm Over a year ago

This doesn't work for elixir consistently. Infinite loop mania.

Jason Axelson · Accepted Answer · 2023-06-10 20:13:08Z

1

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

answered Jun 10, 2023 at 20:13

Jason Axelson

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