Elixir IEX stalls before showing prompt, and doesn't accept input

0
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I recently tried to start iex. I typed iex in the shell (I tried several shells, just in case) and iex doesn't provide any prompt or the like. It just sits there, and if I type special keys like arrows they are escaped and output. If i type control-c it shows me the standard beam interrupt. I checked that iex was pointing to the right place and not oddly aliased, and it seems to be correct. How do I go about troubleshooting this?

I've tried uninstalling and re-installing elixir (but not erlang yet), but that didn't fix it. Are there any cached files I can check or delete?

2
erlangelixirelixir-iexbeam
Don’t you have some configuration .iex.exs files that mess up the startup process? Is erlang shell start normally with erl? – Aleksei Matiushkin
Good idea with erl. it fails the same way. So I uninstalled and reinstalled erlang (is 1.3 gb for installed erlang files normal?). No dice, sadly. same issue. But now i know it's erlang and not elixir. – Garrett Motzner
Please share details about your OS. Also please confirm you have no ~/.iex.exs file. On my machine: du --max-depth=0 /usr/lib/erlang results in 124M. – Aleksei Matiushkin
No .iex.exs file. – Garrett Motzner
OS is mac OS 10.13.2. Erlang and elixir are the newest versions installed with homebrew. – Garrett Motzner

2 Answers

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Look here. I'm specifically thinking of this part of the page:

The .erlang startup file

When Erlang/OTP is started, the system searches for a file named .erlang in the directory where Erlang/OTP is started. If not found, the user's home directory is searched for an .erlang file.

If an .erlang file is found, it is assumed to contain valid Erlang expressions. These expressions are evaluated as if they were input to the shell.

You'll want to see if there's an .erlang file anywhere; this would alter the startup of the Erl shell. That page also contains a bit of detail about environment variables that may affect the behavior of erl as well.

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Ok, so turned out to be an erlang issue. After scouring my drive for erlang related files, I was able to get it to work after a re-install. Files I deleted before re-install:

  • ~/.erlang.cookie (the most likely candidate. contained a string similar to this: "AMVBSKDKEI", sadly, I don't have the exact string anymore)
  • the cached home-brew bottles (unlikely, but deleted them just to be sure)
  • rabbit mq (maybe not the issue, but it was an erlang dependent package I had left installed previously)

/usr/share/file/magic/erlang looks to be part of file(1) and not erlang directly. Left that alone and got it to work.