How to uninstall or upgrade Erlang/OTP?

Question

How can I uninstall Erlang/OTP which I use make install to build from source earlier. The install is pretty simple by using ./configure;make;make install;

The reason to uninstall is that I want to upgrade from Erlang R15B01 to Erlang R15B03.

Now I have:

# erl --version
Erlang R15B01 (erts-5.9.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.9.1  (abort with ^G)
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Answer 1

How to uninstall Erlang on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get purge erlang*

Uninstall Erlang on Fedora:

sudo yum remove erlang*

If you installed erlang from source using the default home directory, you would need to rm -rf /usr/local/erlang/.

Additional cleanup might me required if you had manually copied libraries or executable to other folders, like */lib or */bin.

Answer 2

There is an option --prefix=path of script configure, where path is a path to directory where you want to install an application. For instance:

./configure --prefix=/opt/erlang-R15B01

Do not forget to add appropriate path to PATH environment variable.

If you didn't use this option during previous installation then the default path was used (/usr or /usr/local) and you can just install new version above old one the same way -

./configure && make && make install.

Answer 3

If you using Erlang for development I would suggest looking into kerl VM manager. It allows you to have multiple VM "installed" with different configuration options and possibility of switching between them.