Erlang on Ubuntu

Ubuntu is still (as of Oct. 2011 on Natty) on Erlang R13B3. The release date for that is 2009-11-23. So, nearly two years out of date. I tried installing Nitrogen, but it requires at least R13B4, so it's time to install the new version from source.

The good news is that the source install doesn't stomp on the Ubuntu package. Ubuntu installs it to /usr/lib and /usr/bin, and the source install goes in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/bin, which should be on your $PATH before /usr/bin.

Here's how to set up the latest version on a fairly vanilla Ubuntu 11.04. First, you need to download the Erlang source.

You may need to install some build tools - I had to install m4.
Then unpack and build the source:

tar xzf release.tgz
cd release
./configure
make
make install