🔗 Avoiding recompilation hell in Elixir with mix xref

Elixir is an amazing language and it’s been a huge privilege being able to work with it for over a decade now (how time flies)!

I’d like to point out an issue that, if overlooked, can severely impact productivity in your team. Yes, I’m talking about module (re)compilation.

You make a few changes to a single file in your codebase and hit recompile. Boom: Compiling 93 files (.ex). Then you make another change and boom: Compiling 103 files (.ex).

We’ve all been there. There is a solution to this problem. Whether the solution is painful depends on how long this problem has gone unaddressed in your codebase.

If you don’t actively fix this, the number of recompiled files will likely grow as your project grows, and the harder it will be to get rid of it.