61 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
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=========
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[](http://travis-ci.org/elixir-lang/elixir)
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Elixir is a programming language built on top of the Erlang VM. As Erlang, it is a functional language built to support distributed, fault-tolerant, non-stop applications with hot code swapping.
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Elixir is also dynamic typed but, differently from Erlang, it is also homoiconic, allowing meta-programming via macros. Elixir also supports polymorphism via protocols (similar to Clojure's), dynamic records and provides a reference mechanism.
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Finally, Elixir and Erlang share the same bytecode and data types. This means you can invoke Erlang code from Elixir (and vice-versa) without any conversion or performance hit. This allows a developer to mix the expressiveness of Elixir with the robustness and performance of Erlang.
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# Usage
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You can run and learn about Elixir in the [Getting Started guide][1].
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But if you just want to try it out, clone this repository to your machine, compile and test it:
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$ git clone https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir.git
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$ cd elixir
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$ make test
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$ bin/elixir -v
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Elixir 0.5.0.dev
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If tests pass, you are ready to move on to the [Getting Started guide][1] or to try Interactive Elixir by running: `bin/iex` in your terminal.
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However, if tests fail, it is likely you have an outdated Erlang version (Elixir requires Erlang R15B or later). You can check your Erlang version by calling `erl` in the command line. You will see some information as follow:
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Erlang R15B (erts-5.8.4) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [rq:2] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]
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If you have the correct version and tests still fail, feel free to [open an issue][2].
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# Contributing & Roadmap
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If you want to contribute, the code is organized as follows:
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* `include`, `src` - Both directories contain part of the source code written in Erlang. `yecc` is used as the parser;
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* `lib` - Contains Elixir's STDLIB, written in Elixir;
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* `test/elixir` - Tests for Elixir's STDLIB, written in Elixir. For this purpose, Elixir ships with a small unit test library called `ExUnit`;
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* `test/erlang` - Contains tests for Elixir, written in Erlang. Usually, just internal stuff is tested here. The preferred way to test is in Elixir itself.
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We usually keep a list of features and bugs [in the issue tracker][2].
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# Important links
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* #elixir-lang on freenode IRC
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* [Getting Started Guide][1]
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* [Mailing list](http://groups.google.com/group/elixir-lang-core)
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* [Issue tracker][2]
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* [Textmate Bundle for Elixir](https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir-tmbundle)
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* [Vim Elixir](https://github.com/elixir-lang/vim-elixir)
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[1]: http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/1.html
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[2]: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/issues
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# License
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Copyright (c) 2012 Plataformatec. See LICENSE file.
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