Mix tasks to simplify use of Dialyzer in Elixir projects.

Clone this repository. Then from the local repository:

mix archive
mix local.install
mix dialyzer.plt

Now, change to the directory of the project you want to analyze:

cd ~/my_project
mix compile
mix dialyzer

Dialyzer is a static analysis tool for Erlang and other languages that compile to BEAM bytecode for the Erlang VM. It can analyze the BEAM files and provide warnings about problems in your code including type mismatches and other issues that are commonly detected by static language compilers. The analysis can be improved by inclusion of type hints (called specs) but it can be useful even without those. For more information I highly recommend the Success Typings paper that describes the theory behind the tool.

Beyond the TL;DR for these tasks, the main things to be aware of are the settings you may need to add to your mix.exs.

The Persistent Lookup Table (PLT) is basically a cached output of the analysis. This is important because you'd probably stab yourself in the eye with a fork if you had to wait for Dialyzer to complete this for all the standard library and OTP functions you are using everytime you ran it. Running the mix task dialyzer.plt builds a PLT in HOME/.dialyxir_core_[OTP Version]_[Elixir Version].plt which includes a basic set of OTP applications, as well as all of the Elixir standard libraries. This may well meet your needs, but if you are using additional OTP applications in your project you'll want to add those as well. The apps included by default are [ :erts, :kernel, :stdlib, :crypto, :public_key]. If you need additional ones, add them to a dialyzer: plt_add_apps: key in your mix.exs:

def project do
 [ app: :my_app,
   version: "0.0.1",
   deps: deps,
   dialyzer: [plt_add_apps: [:mnesia]]
 ]
end

If you don't want to include the default apps you can specify a :plt_apps key and list there only the apps you do want in the PLT. There is also a :plt_add_deps option you can set true, and automatically all the apps and paths in your mix.exs deps list will be included in the PLT using the -pa flag. If you don't want to include all your deps in the PLT, you can list individual deps applications in :plt_add_apps and those paths are added with the -pa flag so they will be included.

Finally, if you don't want all your projects to share a PLT you can specify a :plt_file key with a string containing the filename you want e.g. plt_file: ".local.plt"

You can re-run the dialyzer.plt task at any time. It will check all the libraries to see if they need to be updated in the PLT, and it will add any new apps you've added to your project config. It will only rebuild the PLT if you delete it or if you upgrade your Erlang or Elixir version.

There are a number of warning flags used to enable or disable certain kinds of analysis features. You may find yourself reaching a point where one of these warnings is bothering you much more than it is helping you. In that case you can remove that warning by adjusting your flags. The default flags are "-Wunmatched_returns", "-Werror_handling", "-Wrace_conditions", "-Wunderspecs". You can specify the full list in the flags key:

def project do
 [ app: :my_app,
   version: "0.0.1",
   deps: deps,
   dialyzer: [plt_apps: [:erts, :kernel, :stdlib, :mnesia],
             flags: ["-Wunmatched_returns","-Werror_handling","-Wrace_conditions", "-Wno_opaque"]]
 ]
end

By default only the ebin in the _build directory for the current mix environment of your project is included in paths to search for BEAM files to perform analysis on. You may well want to add your deps to the analysis, but I would recommend trying them one at a time. Also as the deps can significantly slow down your analysis you may want to add them them to your PLT.

def project do
 [ app: :my_app,
   version: "0.0.1",
   deps: deps,
   dialyzer: [plt_apps: ["erts","kernel", "stdlib", "crypto", "public_key", "mnesia"],
             flags: ["-Wunmatched_returns","-Werror_handling","-Wrace_conditions", "-Wno_opaque"],
             paths: ["ebin", "deps/foo/ebin"]]
 ]
end