Cortex is the intelligent coding assistant for Elixir.

• Compiles and reloads modified files
• Automatically runs the appropriate tests at the appropriate time
• Accepts pluggable adapters for custom builds

Demo

Installation

Getting started with Cortex is easy. Add the following to your mix.exs file:

def deps do
  [
    {:cortex, "~> 0.1", only: [:dev, :test]},
  ]
end

Umbrella Applications

If you're running an umbrella application, add Cortex to the dependencies of each of the sub-apps that you would like Cortex to monitor. Do this instead of adding it as a dependency in the root mix.exs file.

This is necessary because dependencies in the root mix.exs in umbrella application are not automatically started, which is a process that Cortex depends on.

Usage

Cortex runs automatically along-side your mix app.

iex -S mix

This is enough to get live-reload on file change when editing your app.

Commands

Some commands intended to be used via the shell are provided in the Cortex module:

• Cortex.all - run all stages (currently reload and test runner) on all files in the project

• Cortex.focus - filter test runs to only tests matching the given pattern. Supports:

  • a regular expression, which will filter to tests whose full test name matches that regular expression
  • a string, which will compile as a regular expression and behave like the above regular expression
  • an integer, which will filter by line number for tests
  • a keyword, which will pass through to the include option of ExUnit.configure/1 unchanged

• Cortex.unfocus - clear the currently configured focus

Test Runner

When you run your app with MIX_ENV=test, Cortex will automatically run tests for saved test files, as well as tests paired with saved files in lib.

MIX_ENV=test iex -S mix

Enabling and Disabling

Whether cortex runs at all can be configured via the configuration of your application. By default cortex does run.

config :cortex,
  enabled: false

Cortex also supports the Elixir / Erlang convention of a {:system, ENV_VAR_NAME, default_value} in the config file.

For example, if you wanted to have cortex disabled in your project by default, you could add the following to your config.exs:

config :cortex,
  enabled: {:system, "CORTEX_ENABLED", false}

Then, to run cortex you would start iex with the following options:

CORTEX_ENABLED=true iex -S mix

Phoenix

If you are running a phoenix application, make sure you are running the app in interactive mode:

iex -S mix phoenix.server

Roadmap

• Reload Modules
• Rerun tests
• Reload all modules and run all tests from the IEx shell
• Reload and run tests for a specific module from the IEx shell
• Credo runner
• Dialyzer runner
• ExDash runner
• Custom mix task runner
• Cortex 'focus' mode
• Broader OTP reload support
• Autofetch dependencies when mix.exs changes deps

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license.