This is a short guide on installing Elixir on a WebFaction shared server. Overall it is fairly easy: first we will install Erlang, then Elixir proper.

Installing Erlang

We will first install erlang in our home directory. The installation itself will be in $HOME/lib/erlang, and all binaries will be aliased in $HOME/bin.

  1. Download the latest erlang release in a temporary folder
wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_17.3.tar.gz
  1. Extract the archive
tar xvzf otp_src_17.3.tar.gz
cd otp_src_17.3
  1. Compile and install erlang
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Installing Elixir

We will now install elixir in a similar fashion by installing it inside $HOME/lib/elixir, and then aliasing all binaries inside $HOME/bin.

  1. Download the latest elixir release in a temporary folder
wget http://s3.hex.pm/builds/elixir/v1.0.2.zip
  1. Extract the archive directly in the destination folder
unzip -d $HOME/lib/elixir v1.0.2.zip
  1. Alias all binaries
ln -s $HOME/lib/elixir/bin/elixir $HOME/bin/elixir
ln -s $HOME/lib/elixir/bin/elixirc $HOME/bin/elixirc
ln -s $HOME/lib/elixir/bin/iex $HOME/bin/iex
ln -s $HOME/lib/elixir/bin/mix $HOME/bin/mix