Me Dev, You Jane

If you are anything like me you spend a lot of your time in the erlang shell debuging and testing your code. And some commands are used more than others but they may be a bit on the long side and you may make regular errors while typing it. One of these wonderful functions is make:all([load]). that will compile using your Emakefile and then magically reload the newly compiled modules into the running shell. What I reglarly do is to type load instead of [load].

Enter the user_default module. Any function defined in the user defined user_default module or in the Erlang defined shell_default module will be allowed to run without typing in the module name. One of these functions that you may use often is the c(module\_name). function. First start by creating a directory for your utility modules. I like having it in the ~/.ebin/ diretory. Now add that direcory to the code path by opening or creating the file ~/.erlang and inserting this line:

code:add_pathz("/Users/username/.ebin").

Create your user_default.erl file and but in the following:

-module (user_default).
-export ([sync/0]).

%% Compiles all files in Emakefile and load into current shell.
sync() ->
  make:all([load]).

Then compile it with erlc user_default.erl and start an Erlang shell. Now inside a project you can run sync(). and it will recompile and load you project.

For those interested I will put up my ~/.ebin code up at github.com/JonGretar/erlang_user_utilities. Please fork and make your own changes and share with the world.