This plugin allows you to package up a (configurable) set of files into a compressed archive (i.e. .tar.gz or .zip). The plugin's rebar configuration supports wildcards in both relative and absolute paths for files and directories, output path/file name and will allow you to make multiple files if so required.

The plugin exports a new dist command, an will also run in response to the generate and clean commands, although this behaviour is configurable (e.g. if you wish to ignore the generate command and only run when dist is explicitly given on the command line).

Include the following tuple in your rebar deps:

{deps, [{rebar_dist_plugin, ".*", {git, "git://github.com/hyperthunk/rebar_dist_plugin.git", "master"}}]}.

Then you will be able to fetch and install the plugin (locally) with rebar:

user@host$ rebar get-deps compile user@host$ rebar dist skip_deps=true 

Alternatively, you may put the plugin into your ERL_LIBS path somewhere and use it in many projects. This can be done manually, or using a package manager:

user@host$ epm install hyperthunk/rebar-dist-plugin # or user@host$ sutro install hyperthunk/rebar-dist-plugin 

Configure the dist plugin in your rebar.config as usual:

{rebar_plugins, [rebar_dist_plugin]}. {dist, [Options]}.

See the wiki for details on the various options (and commands).

You execute the plugin like any other rebar command:

rebar clean generate # if you're hooked into a release rebar distclean dist # if you wish to explicitly assemble a distribution 

The project ships with a Makefile wrapper that will execute a bunch of tests against the examples directory using the rebar_retest_plugin. As this configuration has separate dependencies (for test only), the simplest way to run these is to execute make test on the command line.