Hank & Meandro: The Oxbow Code Detectors for Erlang and Elixir
summary
Hank (rebar3) and Meandro (mix) are static analyzers that locate oxbow code in Erlang and Elixir by applying conservative, high‑precision rules so reported items are safe to remove. They run before compile, support parallel or sequential parsing, configurable ignores, and custom rules. Applied to OTP and big GitHub projects they surface real issues (including found 90 unused macros in a well‑maintained repo) and are in production use with ~1k weekly downloads, performing at Dialyzer‑like speeds. Extensible, low false‑positive detectors.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:12Oxbow code overview
- 8:26Detecting Oxbow code
- 13:07Hank detection rules
- 19:15Meandro for Elixir
- 20:17Tool accuracy
- 22:25Configuring Hank
- 25:16Testing Hank
- 28:31Real-world adoption
- 29:57Future improvements
- 30:59Summary
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