Installing Erlang and zx/zomp

Author: Peter Harpending <peterharpending@qpq.swiss>
Created: 2025-09-24
Modified: 2026-05-02

Installing with man pages

Assuming you go through the normal kerl-based installation procedure outlined below, and you want man pages to be installed so man gen_server Just Works™, either:

before building: set environment variable KERL_BUILD_DOCS=yes, and make sure you have dependencies
```
apt install xsltproc fop openjdk-25-jre
```
after building: go to https://erlang.org/downloads, download the manpages tarball, extract it ~/.erts/28.3/ (whatever install dir you chose...)

Linux

Devuan 6 Excalibur

Install necessary build tools

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install \
    gcc curl g++ dpkg-dev build-essential automake autoconf \
    libncurses-dev libssl-dev flex xsltproc libwxgtk3.2-dev \
    wget vim git fop openjdk-17-jre

Put Kerl somewhere in your $PATH. This is a tool to build Erlang releases.

wget -O ~/bin/kerl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kerl/kerl/master/kerl
chmod u+x ~/bin/kerl

Build Erlang from source using Kerl (this takes a long time)

Substitute 28.1 with whatever version of Erlang you're trying to build

kerl update releases
## use the most recent one that looks stable
## you do need to type the number twice, that's not a typo
KERL_BUILD_DOCS=yes kerl build 28.1 28.1
kerl install 28.1 ~/.erts/28.1

Put Erlang in your $PATH

Update ~/.bashrc or .zshrc or whatever with the following line:
```
. $HOME/.erts/28.1/activate
```
Again substituting 28.1 with whichever version of Erlang you built

Install zx

wget -q https://zxq9.com/projects/zomp/get_zx && bash get_zx

Test zx works

zx installs itself to ~/bin, so make sure that's in your $PATH.
```
zx run erltris
```

Ubuntu

Adapt this to your Linux distribution.

Install necessary build tools

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install \
    gcc curl g++ dpkg-dev build-essential automake autoconf \
    libncurses-dev libssl-dev flex xsltproc libwxgtk3.2-dev \
    wget vim git

Put Kerl somewhere in your $PATH. This is a tool to build Erlang releases.

wget -O ~/bin/kerl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kerl/kerl/master/kerl
chmod u+x ~/bin/kerl

Build Erlang from source using Kerl

kerl update releases
## use the most recent one that looks stable
## you do need to type the number twice, that's not a typo
kerl build 28.1 28.1
kerl install 28.1 ~/.erts/28.1

Put Erlang in your $PATH

Update .bashrc or .zshrc or whatever with the following line:
```
. $HOME/.erts/28.1/activate
```

Install zx

wget -q https://zxq9.com/projects/zomp/get_zx && bash get_zx

Test zx works

zx installs itself to ~/bin, so make sure that's in your $PATH.
```
zx run erltris
```