# 16 March 2007

Distel and Erlang mode for Emacs, on Mac OS X

In the comments of my post on Erlang Mode for Emacs Tobbe pointed me at the new Distel repository for Distel. I had originally tried to install Distel last year when I began with Erlang but it didn't work. It works now! Here's the deal.

Check out Distel. In my case I'm going to check it out to /Users/bob/src/distel:
```
$ cd /Users/bob/src
$ svn co http://distel.googlecode.com/svn/trunk distel
```
Configure and compile Distel:
```
$ ./configure
$ make
```

Configure Distel and configure Erlang mode, ensure that the inferior Erlang shell has an explicit node name of emacs so that Distel can connect to the. Here's my full .emacs:

(add-to-list 'load-path  "/usr/local/lib/erlang/lib/tools-2.5.3/emacs")
      (setq erlang-root-dir "/usr/local/lib/erlang")
      (setq exec-path (cons "/usr/local/lib/erlang/bin" exec-path))
      (require 'erlang-start)
(add-to-list 'load-path "/Users/bob/src/distel/elisp")
      (require 'distel)
      (distel-setup)

;; prevent annoying hang-on-compile
(defvar inferior-erlang-prompt-timeout t)
;; default node name to emacs@localhost
(setq inferior-erlang-machine-options '("-sname" "emacs"))
;; tell distel to default to that node
(setq erl-nodename-cache
      (make-symbol
       (concat
        "emacs@"
        ;; Mac OS X uses "name.local" instead of "name", this should work
        ;; pretty much anywhere without having to muck with NetInfo
        ;; ... but I only tested it on Mac OS X.
        (car (split-string (shell-command-to-string "hostname"))))))

Add Distel to your ~/.erlang so that it's on your Erlang code path:

$ echo 'code:add_pathsz(["/Users/bob/src/distel/ebin"]).' >> ~/.erlang

If the Distel installation was done properly your Emacs mode line will be displayed as (Erlang EXT) next time you're editing an Erlang module. If you get a "nodedown: ..." message when executing a Distel command that means you haven't started a shell yet (C-c C-z). A good test is to stick your insertion point at a function name and hit M-. to get to its definition. M-TAB is auto-completion. I haven't used too much else from it yet.

(Now here's to hoping I don't have to learn any more elisp, ever).

erlang 14