Continuous integration

Erlang.mk comes with some support for continuous integration, aimed at open source projects that need to support more than one specific Erlang/OTP release. (If you target one specific release, check the OTP version pinning section of the OTP version management chapter.)

Configuring Erlang/OTP versions to test

To use the CI plugin you must first configure which versions of Erlang/OTP will be used. Erlang.mk provides three separate configuration variables depending on whether you need a normal OTP release, a HiPE-enabled release or an ErLLVM-enabled release.

At the time of writing, this is how you would test against all the most recent patch releases of Erlang/OTP 19 and above:

CI_OTP = OTP-19.0.7 OTP-19.1.6 OTP-19.2.3 OTP-19.3.6.2 OTP-20.0.4

If you want to test against HiPE and ErLLVM but only with the latest version of Erlang/OTP, the following could work:

CI_HIPE = $(lastword $(CI_OTP))
CI_ERLLVM = $(CI_HIPE)

Consult the OTP version management chapter for more information about Erlang/OTP versions and customization of the Erlang/OTP builds.

Running tests across all configured versions

The recommended way to run the ci target is with the option -k. It will ensure that tests are run for all configured Erlang/OTP versions, even if there are errors:

$ make ci -k

Extending the CI targets

The ci target can be extended. For example to run Dialyzer at the end of CI:

ci:: dialyze

Additional setup can be done by extending the ci-setup target. This target is ran before testing each individual Erlang/OTP version.

For example, to ensure dependencies are re-fetched/built before testing individual Erlang/OTP releases:

ci-setup:: distclean

Similarly, the ci-extra target can be extended to run extra commands after an Erlang/OTP version has been tested.