Building CLI Applications with Elixir – A Comprehensive Guide

The article 'CLI apps in Elixir. Part 1' by Brewing Elixir delves into the world of command-line interface (CLI) applications in the context of the Elixir programming language. It begins by describing the simplicity and reusability of CLI apps, stemming from the Unix Philosophy of Modularity and Composition. The text acknowledges the powerful capabilities of Elixir and the Erlang Beam for creating CLI programs, providing a diagram to visualize process-operator interaction through standard streams like stdin, stdout, and stderr. Furthermore, the article outlines common requirements of CLI apps, such as handling initial parameters, running in the foreground, prompting user input, interacting with the file system, and communicating with other processes. Brewing Elixir then explores several methods to create CLI applications within the Elixir ecosystem. These include using Elixir scripts, leveraging the 'Mix Run' for executing project-bound scripts, creating releases with 'Mix Releases', employing 'escript' for packaging executables, and considering 'Burrito' for generating self-contained binaries. Finally, the article briefly mentions 'Mix tasks and archive', 'Livebook', and 'Docker' as supplementary tools for specific goals or niche purposes. The piece concludes with an anticipation for future discussions on these tools, emphasizing their practical applications in building effective CLI apps with Elixir.