<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2004</year><year>2013</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>Observer 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 the Observer
application.</p>
<section><title>Observer 2.1.2</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Documentation corrections.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12994</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.1.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Show ets owner pid in crashdump viewers popup window,
thanks Leo Liu.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-13030</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Several initialisms (eg, ERTS, ETS, SMP) are used as
headings. They were being capitalized incorrectly.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-13044</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed a crash in crashdump viewer when dump contained a
truncated binary.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-13163</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Show run queue status in crashdump viewer.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12401</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Don't refresh observer table view if there was no change</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12819</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Added display of new crashdump information available in
crashdumps from Erlang/OTP 18.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12363</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Added the possibility to view sasl log entries for
processes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12504</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add memory allocator usage and utilization graphs.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12631</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.0.4</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fix crash when opening a process information window.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12634</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.0.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
A note saying only R15B nodes can be observed is removed
from the user guide.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12078</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.0.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fixed statusbar on Windows</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-12162</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.0.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
crashdump_viewer would crash if the owner of a timer was
specified as the process' registered name. This has been
corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11919</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix crash and minor updates.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11949</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 2.0</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
etop trace handler now works in smp environment (Thanks
to Péter Gömöri)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11633</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Application upgrade (appup) files are corrected for the
following applications: </p>
<p>
<c>asn1, common_test, compiler, crypto, debugger,
dialyzer, edoc, eldap, erl_docgen, et, eunit, gs, hipe,
inets, observer, odbc, os_mon, otp_mibs, parsetools,
percept, public_key, reltool, runtime_tools, ssh,
syntax_tools, test_server, tools, typer, webtool, wx,
xmerl</c></p>
<p>
A new test utility for testing appup files is added to
test_server. This is now used by most applications in
OTP.</p>
<p>
(Thanks to Tobias Schlager)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11744</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Removed gs based applications and gs based backends. The
<c>observer</c> application replaces the removed
applications.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10915</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The <c>crashdump_viewer</c> is re-written using
<c>wx</c>. The old <c>webtool</c> interface for
<c>crashdump_viewer</c> does no longer exist.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11179</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.3.1.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The documentation for <c>ttb:tracer/2</c> incorrectly
stated that there was an option named '<c>overload</c>',
while the correct name used in the implementation is
'<c>overload_check</c>'.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11335 Aux Id: seq12385 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed typo in observer documentation. Thanks to Dave
Parfitt.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11475</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.3.1.1</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The encoding of the <c>notes.xml</c> file has been
changed from latin1 to utf-8 to avoid future merge
problems.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11310</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.3.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Some bugs related to calculation of CPU/scheduler
utilization in observer are corrected.</p>
<p>
Current function for a process is accepted to be
'undefined' when running hipe.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10894</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<list> <item> The new Memory field from a crash dump is
now presented by crashdump viewer, both in the process
overview and in the process detail page. </item> <item> A
summary of blocks- and carriers sizes is added to the
allocator information page in the crashdump viewer.
</item> </list>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10604 Aux Id: kunagi-336 [247] </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Use "open" as default browser for crashdump viewer on Mac
OS X. Thanks to Magnus Henoch.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10929</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix observer table viewer crash on formatting improper
lists. Thanks to Andrey Tsirulev</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10931</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Postscript files no longer needed for the generation
of PDF files have been removed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11016</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add processes state view in observer. Thanks to Eric
Pailleau.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11136</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.3</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<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>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The module name in the link to the detail page for each
loaded module was earlier not URL encoded. If the module
name contained e.g. a # this could cause the crashdump
viewer to crash when opening the link. This has been
corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10090 Aux Id: seq12068 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Escape control characters in Table Viewer</p>
<p>
Similar behaviour to old tv. Objects in tables supposed
to be printed in a single line and it looks ugly when a
[...,10,...] integer list creates a new-line. Fix Table
Viewer search crash on new|changed|deleted rows.</p>
<p>
Fix Table Viewer crash after a 'Found' -> 'Not found'
search sequence</p>
<p>
Start position was lost after a 'Found' -> 'Not found'
search sequence leading an undefined position in the next
search. Thanks to Peti Gömori</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10218</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
observer: fix app file (Noticed-by: Motiejus Jakstys)</p>
<p>
Add missing observer modules to observer.app.src. Thanks
to Tuncer Ayaz.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10221</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Make Table Viewer search a bit faster</p>
<p>
Edit table row in a multiline text dialog. Thanks to Peti
Gomori.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10225</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>Allow tracing on bifs.</p> <p>Ask epmd for local
nodes, and remember users last input in connect.</p>
<p>Fix crashes when a table or process information could
not be retrieved.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10075</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 1.0</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The following bugs in <c>ttb</c> have been corrected:</p>
<list> <item><c>ttb:tracer/2</c> would earlier crash when
trying to set up tracing for a diskless node to wrap
files, i.e. when option
<c>{file,{local,{wrap,Filename,Size,Count}}}</c> was
used.</item> <item><c>ttb:stop([fetch])</c> would
sometimes silently fail if multiple nodes with different
current working directories were traced.</item>
<item><c>ttb:stop([fetch])</c> would crash if the tracer
was started with option
<c>{file,{local,Filename}}</c></item> <item>A deadlock
would sometimes occur due to an information printout from
the <c>ttb_control</c> process when <c>ttb</c> was
stopped.</item> </list>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9431</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The file trace port to which the IP trace client relays
all traces from diskless nodes was not flushed and closed
properly on ttb:stop. This has been corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9665</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
A new GUI for Observer. Integrating pman, etop, appmon
and tv into observer with tracing facilities.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-4779</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The following new features are added to <c>ttb</c>:</p>
<list> <item>A one-command trace setup is added,
<c>ttb:start_trace/4</c>.</item> <item>The following new
options are added to <c>ttb:tracer/2</c>: <list>
<item><em><c>shell</c></em> - Show trace messages on the
console in real time</item> <item><em><c>timer</c></em> -
Time constrained tracing</item>
<item><em><c>overload</c></em> - Overload
protection</item> <item><em><c>flush</c></em> - Flush
file trace port buffers with given frequency</item>
<item><em><c>resume</c></em> - Automatically resume
tracing after node restart</item> </list> </item> <item>
A new shortcut is added for common tracer settings
similar to using the <c>dbg</c> module directly,
<c>ttb:tracer(shell | dbg)</c>. </item> <item> Some
shortcuts are added for commonly used match
specifications in <c>ttb:tp</c> and <c>ttb:tpl</c>.
</item> <item> The <c>Options</c> argument to functions
<c>ttb:tracer</c>, <c>ttb:write_config</c>,
<c>ttb:stop</c> and <c>ttb:format</c> may now be one
single option instead of a list. </item> <item> The
history buffer of the last trace is now always
automatically dumped to the file <c>ttb_last_config</c>
when <c>ttb:stop</c> is called. </item> <item> The
following new options are added to <c>ttb:stop/1</c>:
<list> <item><em><c>fetch_dir</c></em> - Specify where to
store fetched logs</item>
<item><em><c>{format,FormatOpts}</c></em> - Specify
options to use when formatting the fetched logs</item>
<item><em><c>return_fetch_dir</c></em> - Indicate that
the return value from <c>ttb:stop/1</c> should include
the name of the directory where the fetched logs are
stored</item> </list> </item> <item> The option
<c>disable_sort</c> is added to <c>ttb:format/2</c>. When
this option is used, trace messages from different logs
are not merged according to timestamps, but just appended
one log after the other. </item> </list>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9403</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The following non backwards compatible changes are done
in <c>ttb</c>:</p>
<list> <item> When setting up trace with ttb, the
'timestamp' trace flag will now always be set. </item>
<item> The 'fetch' option to ttb:stop/1 is removed since
it is now default behavior that trace logs are fetched
when stopping ttb. Fetching can be disabled with the
'nofetch' option to ttb:stop/1. </item> <item> The name
of the upload directory is changed from
ttb_upload-Timestamp to ttb_upload_FileName-Timestamp.
</item> <item> To format the output using 'et', you now
need to provide the option {handler,ttb:get_et_handler()}
instead of {handler,et}. </item> <item> When formatting a
trace log, the handler state was earlier reset after each
trace file, this is now changed so the handler state is
passed not only from one trace message to the next in the
same file, but also from one file to the next. </item>
</list>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9430</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.10</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Do not install *.bat files on non-win32 machines (Thanks
to Hans Ulrich Niedermann)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9515</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.9</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The time needed for loading a crashump into the crashdump
viewer would earlier grow exponentially with the size of
the crashdump file. Reading a file of 20M would take a
couple of minutes, and for a dump of 250M it would take
between 1 and 2 hours. This has been solved.</p>
<p>
Earlier, all processes, timers, funs or ets-tables would
be loaded into the memory of the crashdump viewer node
before sending it on to the web server. This has been
changed and the pages are now sent to the web server in
chunks.</p>
<p>
A security function in newer web browsers prevents a full
file path to be sent from an HTML file input field, i.e.
the field needed to implement the "Browse" button when
loading a file into the crashdump viewer. To overcome
this, the file input field is no longer used. Instead a
normal text input field is used, and the user needs to
manually insert the complete file path. For convenience,
a shell script and a batch file are added to the observer
application. These can be used to start the
crashdump_viewer and a browser and load a file - with the
file name given from the command line. The shell script
and batch file are called cdv and cdv.bat respectively,
and can be found in the priv dir of the observer
application.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9051 Aux Id: seq11789 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.4</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The multitrace.erl installation example file is now
installed in the examples directory. (Thanks to Peter
Lemenkov.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8857</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.3</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The test suite has been updated for R14A.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8708</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.2</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Misc updates</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8456</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.1</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Major improvements of the Erlang distribution for Erlang
runtime systems with SMP support. Previously distribution
port locks were heavily contended, and all encoding and
decoding for a specific distribution channel had to be
done in sequence. Lock contention due to the distribution
is now negligible and both encoding and decoding of
Erlang messages can be done in parallel.</p>
<p>
The old atom cache protocol used by the Erlang
distribution has been dropped since it effectively
prevented all parallel encoding and decoding of messages
passed over the same distribution channel.</p>
<p>
A new atom cache protocol has been introduced which
isolates atom cache accesses and makes parallel encoding
and decoding of messages passed over the same
distribution channel possible. The new atom cache
protocol also use an atom cache size 8 times larger than
before. The new atom cache protocol is documented in the
ERTS users guide.</p>
<p>
Erlang messages received via the distribution are now
decoded by the receiving Erlang processes without holding
any distribution channel specific locks. Erlang messages
and signals sent over the distribution are as before
encoded by the sending Erlang process, but now without
holding any distribution channel specific locks during
the encoding. That is, both encoding and decoding can be
and are done in parallel regardless of distribution
channel used.</p>
<p>
The part that cannot be parallelized is the atom cache
updates. Atom cache updates are therefore now scheduled
on the distribution port. Since it is only one entity per
distribution channel doing this work there is no lock
contention due to the atom cache updates.</p>
<p>
The new runtime system does not understand the old atom
cache protocol. New and old runtime systems can however
still communicate, but no atom cache will be used.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7774</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Observer 0.9.8</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
<c>etop</c> would crash if the emulator's custom
allocators had been turned off (e.g. using the
<c>+Meamin</c> option).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7519</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The copyright notices have been updated.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7851</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.7.4</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>Obsolete guard tests (such as list()) have been replaced
with the modern guard tests (such as is_list()).</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6725</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.7.3</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>This application has been updated to eliminate warnings
by Dialyzer.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6551</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.7.2</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Several minor bugs and race conditions eliminated in the
runtime_tools and observer applications.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6265</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.7.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Crash dump with large integers could crash the
<c>crashdump_viewer</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6301</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.7 (R11B)</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Fixed a bug in <c>etop</c> which made the Load and Memory
information in the header incorrect -- for example the
value shown for <c>binary</c> (memory allocated for
binaries) was actually the number of currently running
processes. (Thanks to Rikard Johansson.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6075</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.6.2</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The Observer application has been recompiled because of
a compiler bug.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5700</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Observer 0.9.6.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p><c>crashdump_viewer</c> is faster when showing message,
dictionary, and stack dump for large processes.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5408</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
</chapter>
