A second pass at making using dialyzer a little easier. This time as a Makefile.

dialyzer.mk

##
## dialyzer.mk: Useful make targets for working with erlang's
##     dialyzer.  Manages a per-OTP version PLT which is then copied
##     to your project directory and adds your dependencies to the
##     plt.  By default the OTP plt is stored in ~/.dialyzer so that
##     it is used by all dialyzer.mk using projects.  This can be
##     changed with the PLT_BASE variable.
##
##     Recommended usage is to add `include dialyzer.mk` to your
##     projects Makefile.
##   
## Author: David Reid <[email protected]>
##

DEPS_DIR=deps
PLT_BASE?=$(HOME)/.dialyzer

ERL=$(shell type -Pf erl)
ERL_LIB=$(shell dirname $(shell dirname ${ERL}))/lib/erlang/lib

OTP_VERSION=$(shell ${ERL} \
                    -noinput \
                    -noshell \
                    -eval 'io:fwrite(erlang:system_info(otp_release)).' \
                    -s init stop)

PLT_DIR=${PLT_BASE}/${OTP_VERSION}
OTP_PLT=${PLT_DIR}/otp_plt
DEPS_PLT=ebin/.deps_plt

DIALYZER_WARNINGS?=
OTP_APPS?=$(wildcard ${ERL_LIB}/*/ebin)


${PLT_DIR}:
	@echo "Creating plt directory: ${PLT_DIR}"
	@mkdir -p $@

${OTP_PLT}: ${PLT_DIR}
	@echo "Generating OTP plt at ${OTP_PLT}"
	@dialyzer --build_plt --output_plt $@ --apps $(OTP_APPS)

${DEPS_PLT}: ${OTP_PLT}
	cp ${OTP_PLT} ${DEPS_PLT}
	dialyzer --add_to_plt --plt ${DEPS_PLT} ${DEPS_DIR}/*/ebin

.PHONY: analyze

analyze: ${DEPS_PLT}
	dialyzer --plt ${DEPS_PLT} $(DIALYZER_WARNINGS) -r src --src

dreid, what's the advantage of the --src switch in the analyze target?

@wardbekker Runs the analysis over the source, instead of the beam files. Basically lets you run the analysis without having to compile first.