Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cess11 803 days ago
You can use asdf to install erlang/BEAM/OTP and elixir, takes a few minutes if you have some previous experience with the tool.

Either way it'll probably take about two hours to have your first rudimentary Phoenix chat application loaded in a browser if you follow some guides and tinker around a bit.
1 comments
square_usual 803 days ago
I would strongly recommend using mise instead of asdf. It's a drop in replacement that is just flat out better for most people.
link
karmajunkie 802 days ago
curious, what makes it better? asdf has always just worked for me, but this is the first time i’ve heard of mise, so i’m wondering what i’m potentially missing out on
link
square_usual 802 days ago
The mise docs have a great comparison page: https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/comparison-to-asdf.html

In personal experience, all of these have held true. Mise is just easier to use than asdf and I don't have to `asdf -h` every time I have to use it. The performance is significantly better and I can use mise exec in shebangs without sacrificing too much startup time. And it's easier to install because it's a SLSE. I wouldn't say it's worth deliberately switching from asdf (though I would, because asdf's CLI is an endless annoyance to me), but if you're on a new machine I don't think there is a reason to use asdf over mise.

link
jeremyjh 801 days ago
Anyone who wants "nodejs latest:20" in their .tool-versions file is probably confused. The point of .tool-versions is to pin a particular version in your source control so you know your whole team is on the same version in that branch. Getting the latest revision whenever you install means pointless drift.
link
square_usual 801 days ago
Are you really sensitive to the minor/patch versions of node? I don't think it should make a difference whether you're using 20.9 or 20.12, and to me to that would be a bigger red flag.

Either way, I don't think many people are checking in tool-versions files. Most JS templates specify a range of node versions they work on and leave it to you to specify which one. I don't think this is unusual for most other languages I use, like ruby.

link
jeremyjh 800 days ago
No, I’m not generally sensitive to a point release but it’s pointless to allow drift anyway. I have had point revisions of docker containers break CI pipelines before and it’s unpleasant.
link
cess11 802 days ago
Maybe it works better with tmux?
link