Introduction to Distillery

Distillery is a powerful toolset designed to streamline the packaging, deploying, and running of Elixir applications. It simplifies the process, allowing developers to focus on writing high-quality code while handling the complexities of production deployment.

Key Features and API Examples

Distillery comes with a variety of APIs aimed to enhance your development and deployment experience. Below are some of the essential APIs with example code snippets:

1. Creating a Release

  mix release.init
  mix release

This command initializes a new release configuration and builds the release.

2. Starting a Release

  _build/prod/rel/YOUR_APP/bin/YOUR_APP start

This command starts the release in the foreground.

3. Running a Remote Console

  _build/prod/rel/YOUR_APP/bin/YOUR_APP remote_console

This command connects to a running instance’s IEx shell, useful for debugging.

4. Hot Code Upgrades

  mix release --upgrade
  _build/prod/rel/YOUR_APP/bin/YOUR_APP upgrade 

These commands prepare and then perform an upgrade to a hot-upgrade enabled release.

5. Configuring Releases

  environment :prod do
    set include_erts: true
    set include_src: false
    set cookie: :"MY_SECRET_COOKIE"
    set vm_args: "rel/vm.args"
  end

Configurations help in defining release options and environment-specific settings.

Example App

Let’s create a simple Elixir application and use the above APIs to package, deploy, and run it.

Step 1: Create a New Elixir Application

  mix new sample_app
  cd sample_app

Step 2: Add Distillery to Your Mix File

  defp deps do
    [
      {:distillery, "~> 2.1"}
    ]
  end

Run mix deps.get to fetch the dependencies.

Step 3: Initialize and Configure Distillery

  mix release.init

Edit the rel/config.exs file to configure the release.

Step 4: Build the Release

  MIX_ENV=prod mix release

Step 5: Start the Application

  _build/prod/rel/sample_app/bin/sample_app start

Your application is now running as a release!

Conclusion

Distillery provides an efficient way to package and deploy Elixir applications, ensuring reliability and ease of use. Utilize these APIs and steps to enhance your Elixir development process.

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