[[overview]]
== Overview

Now that you know how to get started, let's take a look at
what Erlang.mk can do for you.

=== Building your project

Erlang.mk is first and foremost a build tool. It is especially
tailored for Erlang developers and follows widely accepted
practices in the Erlang community.

Erlang.mk will happily build all xref:building[Erlang-specific files]
you throw at it. Other kinds of files too, like C or C++ code
when you are working on xref:ports[a NIF or a port driver].

Erlang.mk embraces the concept of xref:deps[source dependencies].
It can fetch dependency source code using a variety of mechanisms,
including fetching from Git, Mercurial or SVN.

Erlang.mk will automatically xref:relx[generate releases]
when applicable. It can also xref:escript[generate escripts].

=== Exploring the package index

Erlang.mk comes with a xref:deps[built-in package index].
It is built as an extension of the dependency system and is
meant to be used for discovery purposes.

No package is ever installed, they are only used as dependencies
and are always project-specific. They can be thought of as a
shortcut over plain dependencies.

You can get a list of all packages known to Erlang.mk by using
the `search` target:

[source,bash]
$ make search

You can also use this target to search across all packages, for
example to find all packages related to Cowboy:

[source,bash]
$ make search q=cowboy

=== Generating documentation

Erlang.mk supports _EDoc_ and _Asciidoc_.

xref:edoc[EDoc] generates HTML documentation directly from
your source code.

While it is convenient, ask yourself: if all the documentation is
inside the source code, why not just open the source code directly?
That's where _Asciidoc_ comes in.

The xref:asciidoc[Asciidoc] plugin expects all documentation
to be separate from source. It will generate HTML, PDF, man pages and
more from the documentation you write in the 'doc/src/' folder in
your repository.

=== Running tests

Erlang.mk supports a lot of different testing and static
analysis tools.

The xref:shell[make shell] command allows you
to test your project manually. You can automate these
unit tests with xref:eunit[EUnit] and test
your entire system with xref:ct[Common Test].
xref:coverage[Code coverage] can of course
be enabled during tests.

Erlang.mk comes with features to make your life easier when
setting up and using xref:ci[Continuous integration].

On the static analysis side of things, Erlang.mk comes with
support for xref:dialyzer[Dialyzer] and xref:xref[Xref],
to perform success typing analysis and cross referencing
of the code.

=== Need more?

Not convinced yet? You can read about xref:why[why you should use Erlang.mk]
and its xref:history[history]. And if you're still not
convinced after that, it's OK! The world would be boring if
everyone agreed on everything all the time.
