Programming Phoenix

Introspecting with Observer

We’re considering using an umbrella because our rumbl application is growing wider in terms of responsibilities and becoming more complex. We not only serve web requests, but we also now provide a complete information system that might provide dozens of backends in the future. As this grows, it would be great to be able to build and test this project in isolation.

Right now, we only have a gut feeling. Let’s try to visualize this growing concern in a more concrete way. Once we can see it, we can act on it with much more confidence. Luckily, Erlang ships with a fantastic tool called Observer. To take it for spin, start a new iex -S mix session and run this command:

iex> :observer.start
nil

That command opens ...