Mix

A build tool for elixir to building elixir apps. If you’re familiar with Ruby, think about Mix as Bundler, RubyGems, and Rake combined.

Creating our first Project

Type the following into the terminal:

mix new my_app

You will see the following:

$ mix new my_app
* creating README.md
* creating .formatter.exs
* creating .gitignore
* creating mix.exs
* creating config
* creating config/config.exs
* creating lib
* creating lib/my_app.ex
* creating test
* creating test/test_helper.exs
* creating test/my_app_test.exs

Your Mix project was created successfully.
You can use "mix" to compile it, test it, and more:

    cd my_app
    mix test

Run "mix help" for more commands.

Mix.exs

If we open our app in an editor we will see the Mix.exs file in the root directory. This file contains the project information/build instructions for our app.

It will look something like this.

defmodule MyApp.MixProject do
  use Mix.Project

  def project do
    [
      app: :my_app,
      version: "0.1.0",
      elixir: "~> 1.6",
      start_permanent: Mix.env() == :prod,
      deps: deps()
    ]
  end

  # Run "mix help compile.app" to learn about applications.
  def application do
    [
      extra_applications: [:logger]
    ]
  end

  # Run "mix help deps" to learn about dependencies.
  defp deps do
    [
      # {:dep_from_hexpm, "~> 0.3.0"},
      # {:dep_from_git, git: "https://github.com/elixir-lang/my_dep.git", tag: "0.1.0"},
    ]
  end
end

def project defines what is needed in order for your application to compile.

def application defines what is needed for your application to run.

defp deps defines the dependencies that are required for the application.