<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2006</year><year>2012</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>HiPE Release Notes</title>
<prepared>otp_appnotes</prepared>
<docno>nil</docno>
<date>nil</date>
<rev>nil</rev>
<file>notes.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This document describes the changes made to HiPE.</p>
<section><title>Hipe 3.10</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> The type <c>ascii_string()</c> in the <c>base64</c>
module has been corrected. The type
<c>file:file_info()</c> has been cleaned up. The type
<c>file:fd()</c> has been made opaque in the
documentation. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10624 Aux Id: kunagi-352 [263] </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Support for Unicode has been implemented. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10302</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Where necessary a comment stating encoding has been
added to Erlang files. The comment is meant to be removed
in Erlang/OTP R17B when UTF-8 becomes the default
encoding. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10630</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Update .gitignore (lib/hipe/boot_ebin). Thanks to Tuncer
Ayaz.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10705</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.9.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
A faulty spec for process_info/2 could cause false
dialyzer warnings. The spec is corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10584</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.9.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Correct handling of type names in contracts. Fix
crash related to contract checking. Do not rewrite
unchanged PLT. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10083</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Changes in comments and minor code cleanups</p>
<p>
Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10230</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Remove all code, documentation, options and diagnostic
functions which were related to the experimental hybrid
heap implementation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10105</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Bugs in <c>erl_types:t_inf()</c> (HiPE) and in
<c>dialyzer_dataflow</c> (Dialyzer) have been fixed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10191</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.9.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
References to <c>is_constant/1</c> (which was removed in
the R12 release) has been removed from documentation and
code.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6454 Aux Id: seq10407 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed a discrepancy in compile_info</p>
<p>
The BEAM disassembler used the atom 'none' to signify the
absence of a compile_info chunk in a .beam file. This
clashed with the type declaration of the compile_info
field of a #beam_file{} record as containing a list. Now
[] signifies the absence of this chunk. This simplifies
the code and avoids a dialyzer warning.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9917</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Make dialyzer recognize the process_flag option sensitive
add missing specs to documentation (Thanks to Tobias
Schlager)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9923</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Remove hipe_ceach from hipe.app.src to fix
reltool-generated release startup. (Thanks to Tim
Stewart)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9939</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.9</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
<list> <item><p>No warnings for underspecs with remote
types</p></item> <item><p> Fix crash in Typer</p></item>
<item><p>Fix Dialyzer's warning for its own
code</p></item> <item><p>Fix Dialyzer's warnings in
HiPE</p></item> <item><p>Add file/line info in a
particular Dialyzer crash</p></item> <item><p>Update
inets test results</p></item> </list></p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9758</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<list> <item><p>Correct callback spec in application
module</p></item> <item><p>Refine warning about callback
specs with extra ranges</p></item> <item><p>Cleanup
autoimport compiler directives</p></item> <item><p>Fix
Dialyzer's warnings in typer</p></item> <item><p>Fix
Dialyzer's warning for its own code</p></item>
<item><p>Fix bug in Dialyzer's behaviours
analysis</p></item> <item><p>Fix crash in
Dialyzer</p></item> <item><p>Variable substitution was
not generalizing any unknown variables.</p></item>
</list></p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9776</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Possible to run HiPE without floating point exceptions
(FPE). Useful on platforms that lack reliable FPE. Slower
float operations compared to HiPE with FPE.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9724</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
HiPE compiler: The possibility to compile and load
selected functions from a module has been removed.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9751</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>filename:find_src/1,2</c> will now work on stripped
BEAM files (reported by Per Hedeland). The HiPE compiler
will also work on stripped BEAM files. The BEAM compiler
will no longer include compilation options given in the
source code itself in <c>M:module_info(compile)</c>
(because those options will be applied anyway if the
module is re-compiled).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9752</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Optimize <c>erl_types:t_unify()</c>. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9768</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.8.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Clean up hipe.hrl.src (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9511</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug with binary pattern matching of floats of
variable size</p>
<p>
Pattern matching of floats with variable size
(<<F:S/float>>) did always fail. Judging from
similar code for ints, this bug is simply a typo.(Thanks
to Paul Guyot)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9556</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Quote atoms if necessary in types</p>
<p>
Atoms in some occurrences were not correctly quoted when
formatted to strings, for instance by the typer program
(Thanks to Tomas Abrahamsson)</p>
<p>
Update Dialyzer's reference results</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9560</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix typer's crash for nonexisting files Remove unused
macro Fix bug in dataflow Decrease tuple arity limit This
fixes a memory related crash.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9597</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Types for several BIFs have been extended/corrected. Also
the types for types for <c>lists:keyfind/3</c>,
<c>lists:keysearch/3</c>, and <c>lists:keyemember/3</c>
have been corrected. The incorrect/incomplete types could
cause false dialyzer warnings.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9496</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.8</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix hipe bug causing minor heap corruption related to
binary matching. The bug has not been confirmed as the
cause of any actual fault symptom.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9182</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Enable HiPE by default when compiling for PPC64</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9198</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix handling of <<_:N,_:_*M>> type
expressions Fix the argument of
erlang:list_to_bitstring/1 Remove unneeded function
'sequence/2' Same functionality provided by
string:join/2.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9277</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.9</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix erroneous fail info of a hipe_bs_primop</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9036</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The change fixes a bug in the translation of 'bs_add'
BEAM instruction to HiPE's Icode representation. When
these instructions appeared in a guard context the
previous translation was obviously buggy.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9044</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Sanitize the specs of the code module</p>
<p>
After the addition of unicode_binary() to the
file:filename() type, dialyzer started complaining about
erroneous or incomplete specs in some functions of the
'code' module. The culprit was hard-coded information in
erl_bif_types for functions of this module, which were
not updated. Since these functions have proper specs
these days and code duplication (pun intended) is never a
good idea, their type information was removed from
erl_bif_types.</p>
<p>
While doing this, some erroneous comments were fixed in
the code module and also made sure that the code now runs
without dialyzer warnings even when the
-Wunmatched_returns option is used.</p>
<p>
Some cleanups were applied to erl_bif_types too.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9100</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug in the simplification of inexact comparisons</p>
<p>
On 31/1/2011 Paul Guyot reported a bug in the native code
compilation of inexact equality/inequality tests between
floats and integers. The relevant test was:</p>
<p>
f(X) -> Y = X / 2, Y == 0.</p>
<p>
and hipe erroneously evaluated the calls f(0) and f(0.0)
to 'false'.</p>
<p>
The culprit was in the simplification code of the Icode
range analysis which used an erroneous test (lists:any/1
instead of lists:all/1).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9101</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Document exiting and garbage_collecting process statuses</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9102</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Remove hipe constants pool</p>
<p>
Hipe constants used to be allocated within a single,
fixed-size pool for interaction with the garbage
collector. However, the garbage collector no longer
depends on constants being allocated within a single
pool, and the fixed size of the pool both meant
unnecessary allocations on most deployments and crashes
on deployments requiring more constants.</p>
<p>
The code was simplified to directly invoke erts_alloc.
Debugging and undocumented function
hipe_bifs:show_literals/0 was removed (it returned true
and output text to the console), and debugging and
undocumented function hipe_bifs:constants_size/0 was
rewritten with a global to count the size of allocated
constants.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9128</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.8.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Several type specifications for standard libraries were
wrong in the R14B01 release. This is now corrected. The
corrections concern types in re,io,filename and the
module erlang itself.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9008</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.8</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Compiler warnings were eliminated.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8855</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.7</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The HiPE compiler could crash when compiling certain
modules (the bug has been latent, and been exposed by new
optimizations introduced in the BEAM compiler in R14A).
(Thanks to Mikael Pettersson.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8800</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
hipe:load/1 was broken. (Thanks to Paul Guyot.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8802</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.6</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p><c>receive</c> 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.
That optimization will benefit calls to
<c>gen_server:call()</c>. (See <c>gen:do_call/4</c> for
an example of a receive statement that will be
optimized.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8623</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Various changes to dialyzer-related files for R14.</p>
<p>
- Dialyzer properly supports the new attribute
-export_type and checks that remote types only refer to
exported types. A warning is produced if some
files/applications refer to types defined in modules
which are neither in the PLT nor in the analyzed
applications.</p>
<p>
- Support for detecting data races involving whereis/1
and unregister/1.</p>
<p>
- More precise identification of the reason(s) why a
record construction violates the types declared for its
fields.</p>
<p>
- Fixed bug in the handling of the 'or' guard.</p>
<p>
- Better handling of the erlang:element/2 BIF.</p>
<p>
- Complete handling of Erlang BIFs.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8699</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>eprof</c> 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. In measurements we saw speed-ups compared to the
old eprof ranging from 6 times (for sequential code that
only uses one scheduler/core) up to 84 times (for
parallel code that uses 8 cores).</p>
<p>Note: The API for the <c>eprof</c> has been cleaned up
and extended. See the documentation.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8706</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.5</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The documentation is now possible to build in an open
source environment after a number of bugs are fixed and
some features are added in the documentation build
process. </p>
<p>- The arity calculation is updated.</p>
<p>- The module prefix used in the function names for
bif's are removed in the generated links so the links
will look like
"http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#append_element-2"
instead of
"http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#erlang:append_element-2".</p>
<p>- Enhanced the menu positioning in the html
documentation when a new page is loaded.</p>
<p>- A number of corrections in the generation of man
pages (thanks to Sergei Golovan)</p>
<p>- The legal notice is taken from the xml book file so
OTP's build process can be used for non OTP
applications.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8343</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.4</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The documentation is now built with open source tools
(xsltproc and fop) that exists on most platforms. One
visible change is that the frames are removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8201</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Misc updates.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8301</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.3</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Various small bugs (one involving the handling of large
binaries) were corrected and some additions to its
functionality and/or code cleanups were done.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8189</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.2</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Miscellanous updates.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8038</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7.1</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Minor updates and bug fixes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7958</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.7</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Miscellaneous updates.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7877</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.6.9</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The <c>--disable-hipe</c> option for the
<c>configure</c> will now completely disable the hipe
run-time in the emulator, as is the expected
behaviour.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7631</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.6.8</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Minor updates.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7522</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.6.7</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Minor changes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7388</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.6.6</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>A fix for an #include problem which caused the FP
exception test to fail unnecessarily on
debian/glibc-2.7/x86 systems.</p>
<p>Added SIGFPE loop detection to the FP exception test.
This prevents the test from looping indefinitely, which
could happen when the CPU is supported (so we can enable
FP exceptions on it) but the OS isn't (so we can't write
a proper SIGFPE handler). x86 on an unsupported OS is
known to have had this problem.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7254</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
HiPE now also supports little-endian ARM processors.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7255</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Hipe 3.6.5</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
HIPE: Corrected the choice of interface to the send/3 and
setnode/3 BIFs for native-compiled code. Using the
incorrect interface could, in unusual circumstances, lead
to random runtime errors.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7067</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The HiPE compiler's SPARC backend has been rewritten,
improving its correctness and long-term maintainability.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7133</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.6.3</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Minor Makefile changes.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6689</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Miscellanous updates.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6738</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.6.2</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Miscellanous improvements.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6577</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.6.1.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Dialyzer could fail to analyze certain beam files that
used try/catch.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6449 Aux Id: seq10563 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.6.1</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>HiPE runtime system:</p>
<p>* added notes about supported systems to README</p>
<p>* support 32-bit x86 on FreeBSD</p>
<p>* autoenable HiPE on FreeBSD (32-bit x86) and Solaris
(64-bit x86)</p>
<p>* updated x86 runtime system to support glibc-2.5</p>
<p>* work around probable gcc-4.1.1 bug affecting the x86
runtime system</p>
<p>HiPE compiler:</p>
<p>* improved performance of integer multiplications on
all platforms</p>
<p>* corrected a code optimisation error in R11B-2 that
broke some bsl/bsr operations on all platforms</p>
<p>* corrected a type error in the ARM backend which
could cause the compiler to crash</p>
<p>* corrected an error in the SPARC backend's naive
register allocator which could throw the compiler into an
infinite loop</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6423</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.6.0</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Support for native code on Solaris 10/AMD64.</p>
<p>Support for native code on FreeBSD/AMD64.</p>
<p>Native code now handles external funs (<c><![CDATA[fun M:F/A]]></c>). Native code can now also apply so-called
tuple-funs (<c><![CDATA[{M,F}]]></c>). (Tuple funs are NOT
recommended for new code; they are deprecated and will be
removed in some future release.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6305</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hipe 3.5.6</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Improved compilation of receives for the SMP runtime
system.</p>
<p>Improved code quality in HiPE compiler on ARM.</p>
<p>Fix bug in handling of re-raised exceptions in
try-catch.</p>
<p>(HiPE loader) When native code is incompatible with
the current runtime system, fall back to loading the BEAM
code.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6127</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
</chapter>
