From Erlang Community

I do not know much about Erlang yet. This is how I figured out to install the latest source on Ubuntu 8.04 Server. I installed it into /opt to make it easier to upgrade in the future. Currently I am doing this in a clean install Ubuntu on VMware which is fully upgraded.

Linux saturn14 2.6.24-19-server #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 23:54:28 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

1. Installs the tools necessary to configure and build Erlang

sudo apt-get install build-essential libncurses5-dev m4

1. (Optional) Enables openssl support

sudo apt-get install openssl libssl-dev

1. (Optional) Enables java suport

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

1. Creates installation directory, installing to /opt for ease of upgrade and I like my files in a single spot

sudo mkdir -p /opt/erlang

1. Downloads and extracts Erlang

wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R12B-4.tar.gz
tar -xzvf otp_src_R12B-4.tar.gz
cd otp_src_R12B-4

1. Configure with threads, smp, kernel polling, and hipe(??)

./configure --enable-threads \
--enable-smp-support \
--enable-kernel-poll \
--enable-hipe \
--prefix=/opt/erlang

1. Builds and installs Erlang

make
sudo make install

1. Creates links to binary files into normal paths for easy execution

for file in erl erlc epmd run_erl to_erl dialyzer typer escript; do
sudo ln -s /opt/erlang/lib/erlang/bin/$file /usr/bin/$file;
done

1. Test installation

erl
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.6.4 [source] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.6.4  (abort with ^G)
1> q().
ok
2> 

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