Erlang apt PPA does not work

[BatmanAoD]

This issue describes a problem I ran into while attempting to install Erlang on Ubuntu (on WSL): elixir-lang/elixir-lang.github.com#1575

Specifically, Erlang's PPA (their hosted source for Debian/Ubuntu packages) appears to be broken, at least for Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy).

Since Gleam's installation instructions recommend using the PPA, it might be preferable to recommend a different approach. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the most straightforward/correct path would actually be, though I did add a comment on the Elixir issue thread describing my installation approach (downloading the .deb file directly and installing with apt).

[lpil]

Thank you! I'm not sure what the right thing to recommend is here. I am surprised that they are not producing packages for the latest version of the operating system.

[lpil]

I believe this has been resolved

[BatmanAoD]

It's actually still not working (tested this time with Ubuntu 23.04 on a VM on Mac OS), but for some reason the originally-linked Erlang issue has been replaced with a different one: esl/packages#15 [edit: this is actually an issue on the repo for "Erlang Solutions," not for the Elixir language]

The issue thread mentions using binaries2.erlang-solutions.com instead of binaries.erlang-solutions.com, but that doesn't seem to work for Ubuntu lunar; maybe it works for 22, though.

The last comment in the thread implies that RabbitMQ maintains working repos; maybe people should just be pointed there instead of toward the official "Erlang solutions" Erlang repos?

[lpil]

Ah! If there's rabbitmq ones we can use that sounds like a good idea.

[j-koehler]

I can only recommend using the RabbitMQ repository. We made the switch back in may since it was almost a year since I asked for missing binaries for Jammy.

(On a site note: I don't even think Erlang Solutions is an "official Erlang repo". Yes, it's mentioned on the Erlang download page, but this is just a Erlang consulting company kind enough to provide compiled packages of recent Erlang version through a repository. They obviously suffer from very constrained resources and do not provide compiled packages for any "modern" distribution. Debian 12 is missing, Ubuntu 22.04 is still missing, ... I think it would be best not to link directly to them anymore from erlang.org (or at least not to burden them with the implicit "there (and only there) you get compiled binaries" additionally). But that's a different story.)

[lpil]

Excellent, thank you. Would you like to make a pull request? Being familiar with this process.

[j-koehler]

No promises, I don't know this project at all. I just wanted to give the feedback when I read the mention in "my" issue (over at esl/packages).

[BatmanAoD]

I just installed Erlang using the RabbitMQ instructions, and it went fine.

But, come to think of it, there's not a ton of benefit in doing so, because the Gleam installation page doesn't actually have an officially recommended apt source for Gleam itself. So I installed asdf and installed Gleam that way.

...so maybe Gleam should just recommend asdf to Debian/Ubuntu users for both Erlang and Gleam itself?

[lpil]

asdf is quite complex, doesn't do automatic patching, and takes a long time to install Erlang as it compiles from source, so I think in many situations installing using the OS package manager is much preferred.

I'm a huge fan of it but I think it's best suited to development usage and for folks with some familiarity with CLI tools and C compilation.

[Janiczek]

Erlang Solutions has instructions for installing Erlang on Ubuntu different from the "Installing Gleam" doc:

https://www.erlang-solutions.com/downloads/#

They're roughly:

# Add to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://binaries2.erlang-solutions.com/ubuntu/ jammy-esl-erlang-25 contrib
# Possible other lines depending on your `lsb_release -c`
# deb http://binaries2.erlang-solutions.com/debian/ bullseye-elixir-1.15 contrib
# deb http://binaries2.erlang-solutions.com/ubuntu/ bionic-mongooseim-6 contrib

# Add Erlang Solutions repo keys:
wget https://binaries2.erlang-solutions.com/GPG-KEY-pmanager.asc
sudo apt-key add GPG-KEY-pmanager.asc

# Update apt and install esl-erlang
sudo apt update
sudo apt install esl-erlang

[lpil]

Thank you