How to get Erlang, Elixir, Phoenix and Postgres set up on a new blank Ubuntu cloud9.io (c9.io) project/VM

instructions.bash

# I had some issues with this and finally culled together instructions from various sites which finally worked

# The first thing you should do is clone your Phoenix/Elixir repo from Github to a blank Ubuntu c9.io VM

# The next thing we have to do is remove the stock Erlang which is erlang-base-hipe and not esl-erlang
# (this causes problems later on otherwise)
# But first we will add a new apt source
wget https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb
rm erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb # shouldn't need it anymore
# and because the removal will error if this file is missing for some reason, we will touch it
sudo touch /etc/init.d/couchdb
sudo apt-get remove erlang-base
sudo apt-get remove couchdb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install esl-erlang
sudo apt-get install elixir
# Postgres 9.3 is fortunately already set up on the blank Ubuntu image, but you still have to start the service
sudo service postgresql start
# So now we set up the postgres user we expect to have in dev... i usually use postgres/postgres
sudo -u postgres psql # logs into postgres as the "postgres" user
### PSQL COMMANDS
\password postgres # sets the password of the current user to "postgres"
\q
### END PSQL
# At this point running "mix test" failed due to locale issues... en_US.utf8 was completely missing (!!)
# Turns out you have to set it up at the OS level first, then restart the postgres service,
# then modify the (sigh) template0 and template1 databases on the Postgres install
# which are used as templates to create any later databases
# So first check your list of locales:
locale -a
# You should (at this time) see absolutely no UTF8 encodings available. WTF, right? Anyway, let's fix.
# First you have to add en_US (these steps may need to be changed based on where you are in the world)
sudo locale-gen en_US
# Next you add the utf8 for en_US
sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 # I forgot whether it's UTF-8 or UTF8 here. The actual nomenclature seems to change here and there FYI
# now check again
locale -a
# You now (sigh) have to add these lines to your ~/.bash_profile
export LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8"
export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
# Hopefully it's in there right now. If not, you may need to do further troubleshooting on your own
# Restarting postgres...
sudo service postgresql restart
# Moving on... we drop into postgres again
sudo -u postgres psql
# Now we have to convert the 2 template databases to utf8 by default
### PSQL COMMANDS
update pg_database set encoding = 6, datcollate = 'en_US.UTF8', datctype = 'en_US.UTF8' where datname = 'template0';
update pg_database set encoding = 6, datcollate = 'en_US.UTF8', datctype = 'en_US.UTF8' where datname = 'template1';
# If those don't work, try these: (these are the ones I actually used, but the above look simpler)
# I got these from https://techjourney.net/convert-postgresql-template0-template1-encoding-to-utf8-sql_ascii-incompatible/
update pg_database set datallowconn = TRUE where datname = 'template0';
\c template0
update pg_database set datistemplate = FALSE where datname = 'template1';
drop database template1;
create database template1 with encoding = 'UTF-8' lc_collate = 'en_US.UTF8' lc_ctype = 'en_US.UTF8' template = template0;
update pg_database set datistemplate = TRUE where datname = 'template1';
\c template1
update pg_database set datallowconn = FALSE where datname = 'template0';
\q
# Hopefully that worked, otherwise you have to google "defaulting postgres to utf8" and look further into it.
\q
### END PSQL
# At this point (hopefully!), all new databases created (such as the one by your test) will default to utf8. What a pain!
mix test
# NOW I ran into an issue where "citext" was unavailable as a column type... this fixes that:
sudo apt-get install postgresql-contrib-9.3
sudo service postgresql restart
mix test
# SUCCESS! At least on my end. Hopefully yours as well. Enjoy your new cloud Phoenix dev environment!
# BUT NOTE: I still have no idea how to run a server from c9.io yet that I can access locally... lol. Will update!