View Source Installation
Nerves requires a number of programs on your system to work. These include Erlang, Elixir, and a few tools for packaging firmware images. Nerves is actively used on MacOS and various Linux distributions. For Windows users, some people have had success running Linux in a virtual machine or using the Windows Subsystem for Linux available in Windows 10. If you have issues after following the steps below, please search or open a topic in the Nerves category on the Elixir Forum.
Nerves requires specific Erlang and Elixir versions. We highly recommend using asdf or mise-en-place rather than your OS's package manager.
MacOS
The easiest installation route on MacOS is to use Homebrew. Just run the following:
brew update
brew install fwup squashfs coreutils xz pkg-config
If you've already installed Erlang & Elixir using Homebrew, you'll need to
uninstall them to avoid clashes with the recommended asdf
or mise
installation.
brew uninstall elixir
brew uninstall erlang
Optionally, if you want to build custom Nerves systems, you'll also need to install Docker for Mac. After installing Docker for Mac, you will likely want to adjust the resource limits imposed on Docker, to allow it to successfully compile more complicated custom systems. Click the Docker icon in the top menu bar, then click Preferences > Advanced and allow Docker to use all of your CPUs and as much RAM as you think is reasonable for your machine (at least 6 GB). The more resources it has access to, the faster you can compile a custom Nerves system.
Now skip to the instructions for all platforms below.
Windows
Nerves on Windows 10 requires version 18917 (or later) with Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) installed. See the WSL2 install instructions for more information. Once you have WSL2 support enabled you will need to install an instance of Linux. We recommend installing Ubuntu.
Next, follow the instructions for Linux inside your WSL2 Linux installation to finish setting up the environment.
Finally, you'll need to install fwup
using Chocolatey. See the chocolatey
install guide for help installing Chocolatey on
your system. With Chocolatey installed, run the following from a Powershell:
choco install fwup /y
When running on WSL2, Nerves uses the Linux version of fwup
for building the
firmware files and the Windows version of fwup
for burning firmware to SD
cards. It is important that you install fwup
in both environments.
Linux
Package manager installs
First, install a few packages using your package manager.
On Debian-based systems
sudo apt install build-essential automake autoconf git squashfs-tools ssh-askpass pkg-config curl libmnl-dev
On Arch-based systems
yay -S base-devel ncurses5-compat-libs openssh-askpass git squashfs-tools curl
If you're curious, squashfs-tools
will be used by Nerves to create root
filesystems and ssh-askpass
will be used to ask for passwords when writing to
MicroSD cards. Some Fedora and Manjaro users have reported that they had to
create a symlink from /usr/bin/ssh-askpass
to /usr/bin/qt4-ssh-askpass
.
On NixOS or with Nix package manager
Create a shell.nix
file with the following contents:
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
with pkgs;
mkShell {
name = "nervesShell";
buildInputs = [
autoconf
automake
curl
erlangR25
fwup
git
pkgs.beam.packages.erlangR25.elixir
rebar3
squashfsTools
x11_ssh_askpass
pkg-config
];
shellHook = ''
SUDO_ASKPASS=${pkgs.x11_ssh_askpass}/libexec/x11-ssh-askpass
'';
}
Use nix-shell shell.nix
to start a shell with all the Nerves dependencies
needed for building firmware.
If instead, you'd like to install the dependencies on your host system, you can
include the same packages listed under buildInputs
in the
environment.systemPackages
section of your NixOS configuration.nix
file.
Please notes that you may need to adjust the SUDO_ASKPASS
environment
variable to include the correct path to the askpass program of your choice. A
known, working alternative to x11_ssh_askpass
is lxqt.lxqt-openssh-askpass
fwup
Next, install the fwup
utility. Nerves uses fwup
to create, distribute, and
install firmware images. You can install fwup
using the instructions found at
Installation Page. Installing the
pre-built .deb
or .rpm
files is recommended.
Packages for building custom Nerves systems
If you want to build custom Nerves systems, you need a few more build tools. If you skip this step, you'll get an error message with instructions if you ever need to build a custom system. On Debian and Ubuntu, run the following:
sudo apt install libssl-dev libncurses5-dev bc m4 unzip cmake python3
Other Linux distributions
For other distributions, try adapting one of the sections above.
When you have it working, please consider sending us an improvement to this page.
All platforms
First, install the required versions of Erlang/OTP and Elixir. We highly recommend using asdf or mise-en-place. Please refer to those sites for installation directions.
After you've installed a asdf
or mise
, run the following to install
Erlang/OTP and Elixir:
Debian/Ubuntu
If on Debian or Ubuntu, you'll want to install
wx
before installing Erlang. Run the command based on your system:
- Ubuntu < 20.04:
sudo apt install libwxgtk3.0-dev
- Ubuntu >= 20.04:
sudo apt install libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev
- Arch based systems:
yay -S wxgtk2 fop jdk-openjdk unzip
Different Erlang/Elixir versions
It's possible to use different Erlang and Elixir versions with Nerves. The latest official Nerves systems are compatible with the versions below. In general, differences in patch releases are harmless. Nerves detects configurations that might not work at compile time.
asdf
asdf plugin-add erlang
asdf plugin-add elixir
asdf install erlang 27.0.1
asdf install elixir 1.17.2-otp-27
asdf global erlang 27.0.1
asdf global elixir 1.17.2-otp-27
mise
mise use -g erlang@27.0.1
mise use -g elixir@1.17.2-otp-27
Auto plugin install
mise
automatically installs the needed plugin. If it does not work for some reason, you can also manually install with:mise plugin install erlang mise plugin install elixir
It is important to update the versions of hex
and rebar
used by Elixir,
even if you already had Elixir installed.
mix local.hex
mix local.rebar
If you have your own version of rebar
in your path, be sure that it is
up-to-date.
You can now add the nerves_bootstrap
archive to your Mix environment. This
archive allows Nerves to bootstrap the Mix environment, ensuring that your code
is properly compiled using the right cross-compiler for the target. The
nerves_bootstrap
archive also includes a project generator, which you can use
to create new Nerves projects. To install the nerves_bootstrap
archive:
mix archive.install hex nerves_bootstrap