Erts 4.7.3

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• Nothing, we need more input, can't recreate the problem, see Notes.
  Own Id: OTP-2216
  Aux Id: seq 656
• When killing a shell in the ^G command level using the sequence "^G k", some processes associated with the shell were left running. Now, there are no extra processes left anymore.
  Own Id: OTP-2317
• os:cmd on WIN32 does not always catch the output from the executed program correctly. This is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2371
  Aux Id: seq 808
• In previous releases of OTP it was not possible to upgrade the Erlang emulator (named e.g jam471 or beam471) because the executable file was renamed for each new version. This is now corrected by always giving the same name (jam or beam) without version number to the executable file.
  Own Id: OTP-2372
• ets:i() could cause heart-beat timeout if there was many large ets-tables in the Erlang-system. This is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2409
  Aux Id: seq 829
• Comparison between a float and an integer larger than the largest float gave the wrong result. This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2436
• Heart is corrected to work on Linux.
  Own Id: OTP-2488
• LINUX only: The gen_udp process did terminate when sending (with gen_udp:send) to a non existing destination port. This is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2510
• On WIN32 an output of 0 bytes to the shell console with io:format or similar could cause the shell console to hang. This problem occurred when systools:make_script was run. The problem only occured when running "erl" and not when "werl" was run. This is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2575
  Aux Id: seq 932
• UNIX only: The UNIX manual page for erlsrv was wrongly formatted, this is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2593
  Aux Id: Seq 950
• Unix only: If Erlang was started with -noshell, made some output and then exited, it could happen that the output didn't appear until after Erlang had exited (for example, the error messages from "erlc" could appear after the new Unix shell prompt). This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2599
• Redundant text "Module:" is removed from the title of the reference manual for module seq_trace.
  Own Id: OTP-2603
  Aux Id: seq 954
• Low priority processes were not fairly scheduled (in most cases), i.e. a low priority process was never run at all if there were runnable processes of a higher priority. This has been corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2644
• Vxworks only: Erlang crash dumps are now generated if a file system is present.
  Own Id: OTP-2671
• Certain BIFs, such as erlang:monitor_node/2 (which are implemented as traps to Erlang code), behaved erratically in JAM (for example, returning an incorrect value). This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2680
• The heart port program can now handle the shutdown alternative on all platforms. Previously this only worked on Solaris.
  Own Id: OTP-2695
• The number of 'ets' tables was limited to around 1642. This is raised to around 6544.
  Own Id: OTP-2705

Improvements and new features

• The name of a distributed Erlang node should always be on the form Node@Host, where both Node and Host are nonempty strings not containing any '@'. This format is checked when the node becomes distributed. Previously, the check was less strict than it should have been, for example allowing duplicated '@' characters. This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2537
• Enhanced memory handling on VxWorks, erlang can use its own malloc algorithms in a user supplied area.
  Own Id: OTP-2669
• An additional way to stop an Erlang node when a serious error condition is suspected has been introduced (Unix only): if the signal SIGUSR1 is sent to the Erlang system, an Erlang crash dump and a core dump are produced, whereby the Erlang system terminates. (This function was present already in R4A, but left out of the release notes.)
  Own Id: OTP-2700
  Aux Id: OTP-2414
• The max size for Cmd in heart:set_cmd(Cmd) is increased from 254 up to 2046 characters.
  Own Id: OTP-2703

Erts 4.7.1

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• Processes that did "heavy" file processing did not pay for that. They could execute for a very long time before other processes were scheduled in. Now every file operation costs 100 reductions, which will not allow a process to do many file operations before it is scheduled out.
  Own Id: OTP-1932
• When using the -boot and -config command-line options on Windows, filenames in the native Windows syntax using only backslashes didn't work -- forward slashes had to be used. Now backslashes work as well as forward slashes.
  Own Id: OTP-2373
• In the Werl window, marking a region containing blank lines below the last line displayed and choosing 'Copy' from the menu, would crash Werl. This has been corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2381
• When several lines were inserted into the Erlang shell using the paste function of the window manager, all but the first line could be lost. This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2435
• Errors when sending incorrect data to a port was reported using the old method if the owner did not trap exit. This has been corrected so posix error codes are always sent.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2437
• If the real-time clock jumped backwards (for any reason), all timers in Erlang would release immediately. This is handled somewhat more gracefully, by pretending that the time stands still.
  Own Id: OTP-2438
  Aux Id: seq 836
• The garbage collector now does a complete garbage collection ("fullsweep"), whenever a process has binaries that could only be freed by a complete collection. This frees binaries sooner, but takes more times for processes that have a lot of live data.
  Own Id: OTP-2454
  Aux Id: seq 845, seq 849
• The erlc program now tries to execute the program erl in the same directory which the erlc program itself is located in. If that fails, erl will be searched for in PATH.
  Own Id: OTP-2460
• inet:gethostname() did not always return a short hostname without the domain part. The error was introduced in OTP R3B and is now corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2489
  Aux Id: seq 864

Improvements and new features

• The erlsrv utility provides the means for running Erlang applications as system services on Windows NT.
  Own Id: OTP-1669
• There are two new options to open_port/2 which apply when the port is of type 'spawn': {env, Env} and {cd, Dir}, which set environment variables, and change the working directory, respectively.
  The new options are currently not implemented on VxWorks.
  Own Id: OTP-1720
• Line oriented I/O with new parameter {line, N} to open_port/2.
  Own Id: OTP-1886
• New parameter to open_port/2, stderr_to_stdout, will redirect standard error output to standard output for port programs on all platforms.
  Own Id: OTP-1887
• The spawn_opt/4 BIF allows the minimum heap size, garbage collection type, and priority to be set when creating a process.
  Own Id: OTP-2261
  Aux Id: seq 720
• Short lived processes no longer get a second heap for the generational garbage collection.
  Own Id: OTP-2336
• The emulator can switch GC algorithm for a process when the heap grows to a certain size
  Own Id: OTP-2337
• A new module 'instrument' has been added to 'tools'. When running an instrumented version of Erlang, data are collected about the usage of resources, and can later be analysed. The command-line option -instr causes 'erl' to start instrumented Erlang.
  Own Id: OTP-2358
• Three new BIFs exist, for managing timers:
  erlang:start_timer/3, erlang:send_after/3 and erlang:cancel_timer/1.
  (A previously existing undocumented BIF set_timer/3 has been replaced by the new start_timer/3.)
  Own Id: OTP-2376
• When tracing process scheduling, a process to be scheduled in used to be garbage-collected (if needed) before the trace message was sent. This gave an incorrect total for the excution time of the process. This has been corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2394
• For improving the error reporting when detecting an error serious enough to warrant stopping the Erlang node, a new BIF erlang:halt/1 has been introduced.
  Addendum to the documentation for halt/0: halt/0 returns the status code 0 to the environment.
  (The BIF erlang:halt/1 previously existed in an undocumented form, with slightly different behaviour.)
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2414
  Aux Id: OTP-2359
• The description of error_handler:undefined_global_name/2 has been removed, since it's no longer called from Erlang 4.6 and later.
  Own Id: OTP-2525
• Sequential tracing is available in alfa status and only for JAM systems. Since it is an alpha release the programmatic interface could be slightly changed based on experience from users. The module seq_trace contains the interface. Sequential tracing makes it possible to trace all messages that are a direct result from one initiating message e.g. all messages in a call-setup for one connection.
  Own Id: OTP-2527

4.7.3

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• A C-node could sometimes leak a file descriptor after querying epmd about a non-existent Erlang node. This is now fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2683

Improvements and new features

• A problem receiving large messages from remote Erlang nodes has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2676

4.7.1

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• Nodenames passed to erl_call with "-s" are now terminated correctly.
  Own Id: OTP-2241
  Aux Id: seq 707
• erl_var_content was sometimes traversing lists incorrectly, possibly resulting in a segmentation violation. This has been corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2325
  Aux Id: OTP-2326
• A pointer error in the VxWorks version of erl_gethostbyname() was causing segmentation violations. This has been fixed.
  Own Id: OTP-2327
• A missing symbol was causing link errors on VxWorks. This is corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-2333
• Many of the functions in Erl_interface would abort when passed NULL asrguments. Now, these functions return NULL in situations where it is reasonable to do so.
  Own Id: OTP-2335
• Erl_connect() is no longer passing the hostname and nodename arguments in the wrong order to an internal help function. This was causing problems when the node attempted to call erl_publish().
  Own Id: OTP-2355
• In R3 a header file erl_timeout.h was erroneously included in the release. Some symbols were defined in erl_timeout.h that could conflict with user-defined symbols, since they were not prefixed properly. This file is no longer included.
  Own Id: OTP-2452
  Aux Id: seq 848

Improvements and new features

• The documentation for erl_call now states correctly that some arguments need to be quoted.
  Own Id: OTP-2047
• NULL pointers are now handled properly by an internal function used for free()ing Erlang terms.
  Own Id: OTP-2242
• C nodes now have access to Global, through a nearby Erlang node.
  Own Id: OTP-2249
  Aux Id: OTP-2459
• C nodes now have a mechanism for storing state data and backing it up to Mnesia on a nearby Erlang node.
  Own Id: OTP-2250
• A set of primitives has been written that enable the use of an IDL backend for C, so the C-Erlang interface can now be specified in IDL.
  Own Id: OTP-2251
• erl_fix_alloc has been completely rewritten and is now simpler, faster, and does not leak.
  Own Id: OTP-2326
• erl_start_sys and erl_Start_Epmd now works on Windows and VxWorks
  Own Id: OTP-2356
• Some of the threads files in erl_interface are only meaningful on a unix platform. These files are no longer used on Windows and VxWorks.
  Own Id: OTP-2357
• The ErlMessage struct used by erl_receive_msg() has been changed as part of a larger change to make C nodes understand more of the Erlang distribution protocol.
  (*** INCOMPATIBILITY with R3B02 ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2511
• Users must now include an extra header file and link with an extra library to use some of the erl_interface features. In general, this means that for anything new in R4, or to use the communication facilities.
  (*** INCOMPATIBILITY with R3B02 ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2512
• The functions erl_mk_pid(), erl_mk_port() and erl_mk_ref() previously allowed pids, ports and refs to be created with arbitrary numbers in some of the fields. Now the values provided by the caller are masked, so that only valid numbers can be used.
  (*** INCOMPATIBILITY with R3B02 ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2513