eld

eld - an Erlang Linker

Produces executable programs from Erlang code, either

• from a single Erlang module source file, or

• from a number of BEAM files (compiled Erlang source modules) and a number of Erlang library/application archives; such an archive must be a ZIP file with the following contents:

  apporlib/
      ebin/
          *.beam
          *.app   (optional for libraries)
      priv/       (optional)
  

The executables will be relocatable ESCRIPT files containing the code modules specified above, and which will invoke the Erlang runtime system to execute them.

This is intendend for stand-alone programs implemented in Erlang, not for big systems with continuously running services -- there are ample alternatives for the latter.

Examples:

  eld hello.erl && ./a.out % starts in hello:main/1
  eld main.beam utils.beam && ./a.out % starts in main:main/1
  eld -e entry a.beam entry.beam z.beam && ./a.out % starts in entry:main/1
  eld -o main main.beam && ./main
  eld -e myapp myapp.beam mylib.zip thirdpartylib.zip

Runtime dependencies for eld:

• zip, unzip
• coreutils (basename, realpath, mktemp, rm, rmdir, cp, echo, cat, chmod)
• Bourne shell

Runtime dependencies for the generated executables:

• coreutils (/usr/bin/env)
• an Erlang installation (escript) in $PATH