How To Install Erlang on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Erlang on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Erlang is a programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability. Erlang was originally developed to be used in several large telecommunication systems. But it has now slowly made its foray into diverse sectors like eCommerce, computer telephony, and banking sectors as well.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Erlang programming language on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Erlang on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2 software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Erlang on Ubuntu 22.04.

By default, Erlang is not available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to add the Erlang repository GPG key to your Ubuntu system:

curl -fsSL https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/ubuntu/erlang_solutions.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/erlang.gpg

After adding the repository, we can install the latest version of Erlang on our Ubuntu system using the APT package manager:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install erlang

Step 3. Accessing Erlang Shell.

To start the Erlang shell, run the command below:

erl

After the shell is started, you can test by writing a simple Hello World Erlang code:

nano helloworldtest.erl

Add the following file:

% Test to display Hello World Erlang Code
-module(helloworldtest).
-import(io,[fwrite/1]).
-export([helloworldtest/0]).
helloworld() ->
fwrite("Hai Guys.. , Erlang World!\n").

Save and close, after that execute using the following command:

root@idroot.us:~$ erl
Erlang/OTP 26 [erts-11.1] [source] [64-bit] [smp:6:6] [ds:3:6:16] [async-threads:4]
Eshell V11.1 (abort with ^G)
1> c(helloworldtest).
{ok,helloworldtest}
2> helloworldtest01,helloworld().
** exception error: undefined shell command helloworldtest/0
3> hellotest01:helloworld().
Hai Guys.. , Erlang World!
ok

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Erlang. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Erlang programming language on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Erlang website.