Jason Kim's Blog

Phoenix is a promising Elixir web framework that is fast and productive. I heard about Phoenix through a coworker a couple of weeks ago and started playing with it. Then stopped for a while, until I heard that the framework finally hit 1.0 on Hacker News. There were many praises for the framework and success stories that I thought I had to try it again.

This is a summary of what I did to set up Phoenix 1.0 on Mac OS X Yosemite (Version 10.10.5). I also included how I solved some odd errors that appeared during installation process.

1. $ brew install elixir

2. $ mix local.hex

3. $ mix archive.install https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/releases/download/v1.0.0/phoenix_new-1.0.0.ez

   In this step, you might see this error.

   ** (Mix) Could not access url https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/releases/download/v1.0.0/phoenix_new-1.0.0.ez, error: {:failed_connect, [{:to_address, {'github.com', 443}}, {:inet, [:inet], :nxdomain}]}
   

   To solve this issue, you need to ensure that ~/.mix/archives directory has write permission.

   Run $ sudo chmod a+rw ~/.mix/archives/ then try running #3 again.

4. Go into the directory where you want your Phoenix app to live.

5. $ mix phoenix.new hello_phoenix

6. Say yes to Fetch and install dependencies? [Yn] y

   You might see an error during this process. And most likely, it's happening because your Phoenix project directory doesn't have write permission.

   Run $ sudo chmod -R a+rw hello_phoenix. Then try running #5 again.

7. Run $ npm install with node > 0.12.0

8. Ensure that you have postgresql running.

9. Run $ mix ecto.create

   You might get this error.

   ** (Mix) The database for HelloPhoenix.Repo couldn't be created, reason given: "psql: FATAL:  role \"postgres\" is not permitted to log in\n".
   

   Run $ psql postgres

   In the psql, run CREATE ROLE postgres;

   Try running $ mix ecto.create again.

   You might get this error.

   ** (Mix) The database for HelloPhoenix.Repo couldn't be created, reason given: "psql: FATAL:  role \"postgres\" is not permitted to log in\n".
   

   In the psql, run ALTER ROLE postgres LOGIN;

   Try running $ mix ecto.create again.

   You might get this error.

   ** (Mix) The database for HelloPhoenix.Repo couldn't be created, reason given: "ERROR:  permission denied to create database\n".
   

   In the psql, run ALTER ROLE postgres CREATEDB;

   Now try $ mix ecto.create again

   You should see The database for HelloPhoenix.Repo has been created.

10. Run $ mix phoenix.server

11. Go to http://localhost:4000/