The main entry point to compile source files.

It simply runs the compilers registered in your project and returns a tuple with the compilation status and a list of diagnostics.

Before compiling code, it performs a series of checks to ensure all dependencies are compiled and the project is up to date. Then the code path of your Elixir system is pruned to only contain the dependencies and applications that you have explicitly listed in your mix.exs.

Configuration

• :build_embedded - this option was used to copy all code and priv content to the _build directory. However, this option no longer has an effect as Elixir will now copy those at release time

• :compilers - compilers to run, defaults to Mix.compilers/0, which are [:erlang, :elixir, :app].

• :consolidate_protocols - when true, runs protocol consolidation via the mix compile.protocols task. The default value is true.

• :build_path - the directory where build artifacts should be written to. This option is intended only for child apps within a larger umbrella application so that each child app can use the common _build directory of the parent umbrella. In a non-umbrella context, configuring this has undesirable side-effects (such as skipping some compiler checks) and should be avoided.

• :prune_code_paths - prune code paths before compilation. When true (default), this prunes code paths of applications that are not listed in the project file with dependencies. When false, this keeps the entirety of Erlang/OTP available when the project starts, including the paths set by the code loader from the ERL_LIBS environment as well as explicitly listed by providing -pa and -pz options to Erlang.

Compilers

To see documentation for each specific compiler, you must invoke help directly for the compiler command:

$ mix help compile.elixir
$ mix help compile.erlang

You can get a list of all compilers by running:

$ mix compile --list

Command line options

• --all-warnings (--no-all-warnings) - prints all warnings, including previous compilations (default is true except on errors)
• --erl-config - path to an Erlang term file that will be loaded as Mix config
• --force - forces compilation
• --list - lists all enabled compilers
• --no-app-loading - does not load .app resource file after compilation
• --no-archives-check - skips checking of archives
• --no-compile - does not actually compile, only loads code and perform checks
• --no-deps-check - skips checking of dependencies
• --no-elixir-version-check - does not check Elixir version
• --no-optional-deps - does not compile or load optional deps. Useful for testing if a library still successfully compiles without optional dependencies (which is the default case with dependencies)
• --no-prune-code-paths - do not prune code paths before compilation, this keeps the entirety of Erlang/OTP available when the project starts
• --no-protocol-consolidation - skips protocol consolidation
• --no-validate-compile-env - does not validate the application compile environment
• --return-errors - returns error status and diagnostics instead of exiting on error
• --warnings-as-errors - exit with non-zero status if compilation has one or more warnings. Only concerns compilation warnings from the project, not its dependencies.