🔗 Variations on the "leverage language from Elixir" pattern

It seems that a pattern emerged in my recent months or years of Elixir, and it looks like I am now knee-deep in this pattern : leveraging other languages from Elixir.

This leverage takes, it seems, three forms :

• Writing Elixir code that generates and runs code.
• Embedding (à la Zigler) <language> code in Elixir and running it.
• Writing Elixir code that generates instructions for <language>.

And it all depends on managing ‘s runtimes from Elixir, which takes two forms :

• Checking for <language>‘s presence and adequation and providing instructions
• Managing the install itself from Elixir

Note that I won’t talk of Rustler which is already covered a bit on the blog and now well-known. It is a fantastic tool but does not offer the “code-in-code” approach described here. Nevertheless, a Rustler NIF in a monorepo still achieves the benefits I’m talking about here.