Advent of Code Elixir Starter

Template repository for Elixir solutions to Advent of Code puzzles.

Adapted from another Advent of Code Elixir Starter.

✨ Features ✨

• Four Mix tasks: (Run mix help <task_name> after building the project for usage info)
  • mix advent.gen - Generate boilerplate solution and test modules for a new year of puzzles.
  • mix advent.solve - Run or benchmark a solution.
  • mix advent.test - Run tests against a solution. (A convenience wrapping mix test)
  • mix advent.try - Run tests followed by a solution. (A convenience wrapping mix advent.test and mix advent.solve)
• Automatically downloads puzzle inputs as needed.
• Optional benchmarking with Benchee.
• Special support for puzzle solutions that reuse the same parsed value for both parts.
• Optionally run in a container that handles Erlang/Elixir installation for you.

Usage

Start by creating your own repository from this template, using the big green button up there ↗️.

Once that's done, let's get your project running.

Enable the automatic puzzle input downloader by creating a config/secrets.exs file containing the following:

import Config

config :advent_of_code, AdventOfCode.Input,
  allow_network?: true,
  session_cookie: "53616c7465645f5f32a0594ab048ebc1b8fdcc893bc8c41762299f5a78d87b3069a61085b644c3361db389d49c7c37da1b11ba47f6599ef5436fa127691d5e59" # paste your AoC session cookie value here

Fetch dependencies with

mix deps.get

Generate a set of solution and test files for a new year of puzzles with

mix advent.gen -y${YEAR}

Now you can run a solution with

mix advent.solve -d${DAY} [-p${1 | 2}] [-y${YEAR}] [--bench]

and tests with

mix advent.test [-d${DAY}] [-y${YEAR}]

either directly in your local terminal, or in VSCode's terminal pane while connected to a dev container as described below.

As an additional convenience, you can also use

mix advent.try -d${DAY} [-p${1 | 2}] [-y${YEAR}] [--bench]

to run tests, and then if they pass, a solution.

Get started in a self-contained environment

Your project generated from this template repository can optionally run in a dev container for remote development.
You have two options:

Run in your browser using GitHub Codespaces

1. Go to the landing page of your generated repo.
2. Click the <> Code drop-down menu, select the Codespaces tab, and click the big green button.
3. Wait for the Codespace to build.¹
4. Once the in-browser editor activates, follow the steps from Usage to enable puzzle downloads and run a solution. (You can use Ctrl+Shift+` to open a terminal pane.)

🐳 Using Visual Studio Code + Docker Desktop

Requires Docker Desktop or an alternative Docker-compliant CLI, like podman.

Simply open the project directory locally in VS Code. It will show a popup asking if you want to use the Dev Container. It will then guide you through getting set up, building the container image, and connecting to the running dev container.

Footnotes

1. If you decide to stick with Codespaces, consider configuring prebuilds for your project to speed up build time. ↩