How to fix 'wxe_driver.so' error in Elixir

on elixir 1 minute read

If you trying to start an observer or debugger from iex (e.g. :observer.start or :debugger.start) and keep getting the following error:
ERROR: Could not find 'wxe_driver.so' in: /usr/lib/erlang/lib/wx-1.4/priv
then you probably have erlang-nox (headless version of Erlang VM) installed or doesn't have any wxWidgets library in your system.

To fix this - just install full version of Erlang and any wxWidgets library that fits your OS.

If you are using Arch Linux, then you probably installed Elixir from community/elixir package which use community/erlang-nox as dependency.

Install full version of Erlang which comes with extra/wxgtk:

# pacman -S erlang

And the error should gone.

iex-observer-start