I normallyrun Vagrant with an Oracle VM VirtualBox to host theErlang development environment on my windows workstation, but now that Bash on Windows or Windows Subsystem for linux (WSL) is available on Windows 10, I decided to give that a try.
After installing WSL on Windows, I installedErlang: “ sudo apt-get install erlang ” installs Erlang v16, and that appears to work OK, but I need v19.
Uninstallingthe default Erlang version “ sudo apt-get autoremove erlang “, and following the instructions at Erlang Solutions (Use the instructions under “ Installation using repository ” near the bottom of the page) the latest version v19.1.3, installed without incident, but when I attempt to compile or start the Erlang shell, I get the error:
mark@MARK-LAPTOP-1:/mnt/c/Users/Mark$ erl Failed to write to erl_child_setup: 22 Crash dump is being written to: erl_crash.dump...done mark@MARK-LAPTOP-1:/mnt/c/Users/Mark$ Hmm.Checkingthe the installed version and kernel version of WSL:
mark@MARK-LAPTOP-1:/mnt/c/Users/Mark$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty mark@MARK-LAPTOP-1:/mnt/c/Users/Mark$ uname -r 3.4.0+ mark@MARK-LAPTOP-1:/mnt/c/Users/Mark$Going backto my Vagrant VM, and typing the same commands:
vagrant@ubuntu-3:~$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty vagrant@ubuntu-3:~$ uname -r 3.13.0-103-generic vagrant@ubuntu-3:~$and of courseErlang works here:
vagrant@ubuntu-3:~$ erl Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.1] [source] [64-bit] [async-threads:10] [kernel-poll:false] Eshell V8.1 (abort with ^G) 1>The only differenceI can see between the two installations, is that the kernel version is “ 3.4.0+ ” on WSL and “ 3.13.0-103-generic ” on my Vagrant VM. I assume that is the reason Erlang V19 doesn’t work on on WSL but, of course, I don’t know why.
Fortunately, it appears help is on the way. Currently my Windows 10 Build is 14393.x , which is just beyond the Win 10 Anniversary Update ( Build 14388 ), but Build 14951 which is still in the Insider Preview state, installs Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial). My hope of course, is that this problem will go away with the newer version of Ubuntu.
When Build14951 or greater, gets pushed to my workstation, I’ll try this little experiment again. Stay tuned.