OTP 23 Brings Docs to the Shell, Erlang LS brings them to you!

You may have heard that Erlang/OTP 23 introduces a couple of new functions that can be used for displaying documentation for modules, functions and types in the Erlang shell:

1> h(lists).

   lists

  This module contains functions for list processing.

  Unless otherwise stated, all functions assume that position
  numbering starts at 1. That is, the first element of a list is at
  position 1.

  Two terms T1 and T2 compare equal if T1 == T2 evaluates to
  true. They match if T1 =:= T2 evaluates to true.

  Whenever an ordering function F is expected as argument, it is
  assumed that the following properties hold of F for all x, y,
  and z:

   • If x F y and y F x, then x = y (F is antisymmetric).

   • If x F y and y F z, then x F z (F is transitive).

   • x F y or y F x (F is total).

  An example of a typical ordering function is less than or equal
more (y/n)? (y)

This is an amazing improvement, but as developers we often spend a good portion of our time in our IDE of choice, be it VSCode, Emacs, Vim or anything else. Wouldn't it be even more awesome if those pieces of documentation were closer to us in the IDE? It turns out this is something trivial to do.

These pieces of documentation are stored as chunks using the format specified in the EEP-48 Erlang Enhancement Proposal and now implemented in OTP 23. Erlang LS already supports chunks, so the documentation for modules, functions and types is now available on hover when using OTP 23. This is how they look in Emacs:

To get them, ensure you build your Erlang/OTP distribution with support for Doc Chunks. If you are using kerl, this is as simple as:

KERL_BUILD_DOCS=yes KERL_DOC_TARGETS=chunks kerl build 23.0.1 23.0.1
KERL_BUILD_DOCS=yes kerl install 23.0.1 /your/favourite/path/to/23.0.1

Enjoy!