Highlights composed by Matthew Sporleder.
Changes in R14B02 (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R14B02.readme)
- It is now possible to use Erlang specifications and types
in EDoc documentation
- All tests in Erlang/OTP have been converted to be run with
Common Test as the backend instead of Test Server.
- From this release, the previously experimental halfword
emulator is now official
- Dependency generation for Makefiles has been added to the
compiler and erlc
- Add a --fullpath option to Dialyzer (include version 2.4.2)
- Many fixes in erts
- Remove hipe constants pool
- Partial support for recursive structs and unions
- It is now possible to use SSH to sign and verify binary data.
- typer has been rewritten
Changes R14B01 (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R14B01.readme)
- New ETS option compressed, to enable a more compact storage
format at the expence of heavier table operations
- There is now a new function inet:getifaddrs/0 modeled after
C library function getifaddrs() on BSD and Linux that reports
existing interfaces and their addresses on the host
- Multiple crashes and infinite loops fixed
- AES CTR encryption support in crypto
- erl_call: remove get_hostent
- The Erlang VM now supports Unicode filenames
- New ETS option compressed
Changes in R14B (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R14B.readme)
- Large parts of the ethread library have been rewritten.
- The changed API of the ethread library has also caused
modifications in the Erlang runtime system.
- Some Built In Functions (BIFs) are now autoimported
- Added erlang:system_info(build_type)
- A number of memory leaks in the crypto NIF library have been fixed
- erl_call: fix multiple buffer overflows
- NIF 64-bit integer support
- Removed some potential vulnerabilities from the Erlang Port
Mapper Daemon (epmd)
- Replaced the old http client api module (http) with the new,
httpc in the users guide.
- inet6 improvements
- ssh fixes
- many ssl improvements/fixes
- wx crash fix
Changes in R14A (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R14A.readme)
- R14A is a major new release of Erlang/OTP.
- The module binary from EEP31 (and EEP9) is implemented
- It is now possible for the user to provide specific callback
modules that handle test configuration data
- New NIF features
- Receive statements that can only read out a newly created
reference are now specially optimized so that it will execute
in constant time regardless of the number of messages in the
receive queue for the process.
- The run_test script has been replaced by a program (with the
same name) which can be executed without explicit installation
- eprof has been reimplemented with support in the Erlang
virtual machine and is now both faster (i.e. slows down the
code being measured less) and scales much better
Changes in R13B04 (http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R13B04.readme)
- Many documentation and documentation build improvements
- cross-compile/build improvements
- buffer overflow fix
- telnet keep alive fixes
- compiler crash on boolean ifs
- -Werror for erlc fixed
- macro overloading implemented
- the crypto module now supports Blowfish
- explicit top directories in archive files are now optional
- add lock profiling tool: lcnt
- httpd methods "PUT" and "DELETE" now allowed + others fixes
to resolver routine
- compression supported when copying between mnesia nodes
patches to add it). Drop pax from the default USE_TOOLS list.
Make bsdtar the default for those places that wanted gtar to extract
long links etc, as bsdtar can be built of the tree.
=== SMP Support ===
The major news is the support for SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing).
SMP is supported by most modern operating systems like Linux, Windows, Mac OSx,
Solaris and is becoming more important now when dual processors,
hyper-threading technology and multi-core systems are a reality.
With Erlang, most of the problems which occur in multi-threaded programs have
been solved once and for all in the Erlang VM and do not have to be handled by
the application programmers.
In the SMP version of the Erlang virtual machine, there can be many process
schedulers running in separate OS threads. As default there will be as many
schedulers as there are processors or processor cores on the system.
The SMP support is totally transparent for the Erlang programs. That is, there
is no need to change or recompile existing programs. Programs with built-in
assumptions about sequential execution must be rewritten in order to take
advantage of the SMP support, however.
In this release, the Erlang VM supports SMP with focus on stability. There will
follow a number of subsequent steps with necessary optimizations and support
for more platforms.
=== Erlang Language and Related Issues ===
* The andalso and orelse operators are now allowed to be used in guards.
That also applies to match specifications.
* The BIF is_record/3 can now be used in guards. Also, is_record/3 can now
be called without an erlang: module prefix for consistency with the other
is_* functions.
* The compiler options ignore_try and ignore_cond, which allowed code that
used unquoted try or cond as atoms or record tags, has been removed. Old
code that depended on the options need to be revised to have occurrences
of try or cond as atom or record tags single-quoted. (Note: Although cond
is a reserved keyword, there is no cond statement. It might be introduced
in a future release.)
* (ERTS 5.4.8) The new fun M:F/A construct creates a fun that refers to the
latest version of M:F/A. This syntax is meant to replace tuple funs {M,F}
which have many problems.
* (ERTS 5.4.8) The new type test is_function(Fun, Arity) -- which may be
used in guards -- test whether Fun is a fun that can be applied to Arity
arguments.
=== New Applications ===
Dialyzer
Dialyzer is a static analysis tool that identifies software discrepancies such
as type errors, unreachable code, unnecessary tests, etc in single Erlang
modules or entire (sets of) applications.
Inviso
The Inviso application, together with some new extensions to Runtime_Tools, is
aimed at providing features for efficient tracing of production Erlang/OTP
systems:
* Distributed tracing - tracing on any number of Erlang nodes.
* Autostart - tracing during system start-up.
* Overload protection - mechanisms for suspending and later reactivating
tracing, should an overload situation occur.
* Enhanced use of meta tracing.
* Trace cases - predefined specifications of what to trace.
* Off-line merging and formatting of log files.
Inviso is still under development. An easier-to-use trace tool, using the
features listed above, is planned to be released as an R11B patch in Q3/Q4
2006.
SSH
The SSH application is an Erlang implementation of the secure shell protocol.
It is considered to be a beta release, meaning there can be changes made to the
API before it reaches 1.0.
=== Existing Applications ===
Compiler
(Compiler 4.3.6) It is now possible to encrypt the debug information in Beam
files.
Debugger
(Debugger 2.0) The debugger can now handle the try/catch language construct.
Inets
The Erlang implementation of the TFTP procotcol, tftp, is now documented.
Kernel
In Kernel 2.10.X, several bug fixes and improvements have been made in global ,
the global name registration facility.
OS_Mon
(OS_Mon 2.0) The entire OS_Mon application (code and documentation) has been
reviewed and consequently updated with the goal to make the application more
robust, homogeneous and easier to configure.
STDLIB
Added the zip module with functions for reading and creating zip archives.
