path: root/doc/src/guide/start.asciidoc

== Starting and stopping

This chapter describes how to start and stop the Gun application.

=== Setting up

Before Gun can be used it needs to be in Erlang's `ERL_LIBS` path variable.
If you use `erlang.mk` or a similar build tool, you only need to specify
Gun as a dependency to your application and the tool will take care
of downloading Gun and setting up paths.

With `erlang.mk` this is done by adding `gun` to the `DEPS` variable
in your Makefile.

.Adding Gun as an erlang.mk dependency

[source,make]
DEPS = gun

=== Starting

Gun is an _OTP application_. It needs to be started before you can
use it.

.Starting Gun in an Erlang shell

[source,erlang]
----
1> application:ensure_all_started(gun).
{ok,[ranch,crypto,cowlib,asn1,public_key,ssl,gun]}
----

=== Stopping

You can stop Gun using the `application:stop/1` function, however
only Gun will be stopped. This is the equivalent of `application:start/1`.
The `application_ensure_all_started/1` function has no equivalent for
stopping all applications.

.Stopping Gun

[source,erlang]
application:stop(gun).

=== Using Gun with releases

An _OTP release_ starts applications automatically. All you need
to do is to set up your application resource file so that Gun can
be included in the release. The application resource file can be
found in `ebin/your_application.app`, or in `src/your_application.app.src`
if you are using a build tool like `erlang.mk`.

The key you need to change is the `applications` key. By default
it only includes `kernel` and `stdlib`. You need to add `gun` to
that list.

.Adding Gun to the application resource file

[source,erlang]
{applications, [
	kernel,
	stdlib,
	gun
]}

Do not put an extra comma at the end, the comma is a separator
between the elements of the list.