path: root/lib/erl_interface/doc/src/notes.xml

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<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">

<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2004</year><year>2009</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>Erl_interface 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 Erl_interface application.</p>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.4</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>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.3</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The manual states that erl_receive() return the reason in
	    the <c>ErlMessage</c> struct. This was not the case and
	    the function is now corrected.</p>
          <p>
	    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-4969</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    In <c>send_exit.c</c> an errorneous size of memory
	    allocation could occur when reallocating a buffer.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_decode_trace.c</c> the index could be updated
	    when the decoding failed.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_printterm.c</c> the index could be updated when
	    the decoding failed in lists and tuples.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_decode_term.c</c> when decoding a double
	    (ERL_FLOAT_EXT) no check was done to ensure that the last
	    of the 31 bytes was null terminated.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_decode_term.c</c> when decoding references, only
	    the first 3 bytes are read, but the index did not
	    increment by the total size.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_decode_fun.c</c> no check of correct buffer
	    allocation or data length was done.</p>
          <p>
	    In <c>ei_decode_string.c</c> the integer list string case
	    did not decode the NIL tail correctly.</p>
          <p>
	    These errors has now been fixed. (Thanks to Romain
	    Lenglet, Paul Mineiro and Paul Guyot).</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6117</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    <c>ei_decode_big</c> could be decoded with a garbage
	    byte.</p>
          <p>
	    <c>ei_encode_big</c> and <c>ei_x_encode_big</c> is now
	    available.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7554</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The function <c>erl_init_resolve()</c> did not conform to
	    C99 standard which caused a build error on some
	    platforms. This has now been fixed.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8093</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    <c>Makefile.in</c> has been updated to use the LDFLAGS
	    environment variable (if set). (Thanks to Davide
	    Pesavento.)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8157</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>


    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Added support for 64-bit integers in encoding/decoding.</p>
          <p>
	    Added support for better printouts of binaries.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6091</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.2</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    A problem with <c>gethostbyname</c> in <c>erl_start.c</c>
	    could cause a buffer overflow. This has now been fixed.</p>
          <p>
	    Clean up of code and removed compiler warnings.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7978</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.1</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>A faulty validation in <c>ei_reg_getpval</c> caused it
	    to never return the key-value. This has now been fixed.
	    (Thanks to Matt Stancliff)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7960</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>


    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>Minor update to the <c>configure</c> script.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7959</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.1</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>Minor update to the <c>configure</c> script.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7959</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Nodes belonging to different independent clusters can now
	    co-exist on the same host with the help of a new
	    environment variable setting ERL_EPMD_PORT.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7826</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.5.9</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    A type-casting bug in ei_skip_term and ei_printterm on
	    64bit platforms rendering undefined results is now
	    corrected.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7577</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    A bug in the hostent copying code of erl_interface on
	    MacOS X/Darwin is now corrected.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7593</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>A problem with building <c>erl_interface</c> on
	    FreeBSD has been fixed (Thanks to Akira Kitada).</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7611</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.5.8</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Fixed bug in erl_interface when decoding broken data</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7448</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>


<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.5.7</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    An erroneous freeing of memory could occur when using
	    <c>ei_x_format_wo_ver</c> in erl_interface, resulting in
	    a segmentation fault.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6795</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    A faulty compare in <c>erl_marshal</c> has now been
	    fixed. (Thanks to Simon Cornish and Paul Mineiro)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7368</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.5.6</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Minor documentation fixes.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7183 Aux Id: OTP-7118 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.5.5.4</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The symbol __erl_errno was undefined in the single thread
	    version of the ei library, but is now defined.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6887</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Corrected FreeBSD build error.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7093</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.5.5.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Calls to alloca in erl_marshal.c have been removed. A
            static buffer is now used instead to store node names
            temporarily.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6331 Aux Id: seq10468 </p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>ei_print_term interprets a list of integers with values
            from 0 to 255 as a string. If the original list contains
            the integer 0, this is considered terminator of the
            string. This is incorrect. The function has now been
            modified to not look for '\0' in a string, but always
            print all characters.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6339 Aux Id: seq10492 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.5.5.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The combination of xeon processors with 64bit x86
            extensions and a 32bit linux could cause ei_decode_long
            and ei_decode_longlong to fail for the value LONG_MIN and
            LONGLONG_MIN. The conversion is now made more portable.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6216</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.5.5.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Portability enhancements.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6132</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.5.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Different (and old) <c><![CDATA[config.guess]]></c> files in the
            <c><![CDATA[erts]]></c> and <c><![CDATA[erl_interface]]></c> applications would
            cause build problems on the new Intel-based iMacs.
            (Thanks to Sebastion Strollo.)</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5967</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>pthread header and library mismatch on linux systems (at
            least some SuSE and Debian) with both NPTL and
            Linuxthreads libraries installed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5981</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Support for a C node to connect to an Erlang node on a
            standalone host has been added.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5883 Aux Id: seq10170 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.5.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>A configuration test error caused erl_interface to be
            built without support for threads. This has been
            corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5456</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.5.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Changes and improvements have been made to the build and
            test environment to solve problems with failing
            erl_interface test cases.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5295 Aux Id: OTP-5387 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Process identifiers and port identifiers have been
            made more unique. Previously 18 bits were used as id in
            the internal representation of process and port
            identifiers. Now 28 bits are used. </p>
          <p>The maximum
            limit on the number of concurrently existing processes
            due to the representation of pids has been increased to
            268435456 processes. The same is true for ports. This
            limit will at least on a 32-bit architecture be
            impossible to reach due to memory shortage. </p>
          <p><em>NOTE:</em> By default, the <c><![CDATA[ERTS]]></c>, and the
            <c><![CDATA[erl_interface]]></c>, <c><![CDATA[ei]]></c>, and <c><![CDATA[jinterface]]></c>
            libraries are now only guaranteed to be compatible with
            other Erlang/OTP components from the same release. It is
            possible to set each component in compatibility mode of
            an earlier release, though. See the documentation for
            respective component on how to set it in compatibility
            mode. </p>
          <p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4968 Aux Id: OTP-4196 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.4.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Corrections for mistakes done for patch erl_605/OTP-4874.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4995 Aux Id: OTP-4874 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.4.4</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>A small optimization in ei_rpc*() was added and a bug in
            ei_decode_longlong() was corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4784</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.4.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Strings longer than 65535 bytes were encoded wrong in
            ei/erl_interface.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4865 Aux Id: EABln07451 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_interface 3.4.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>erl_call -a parsed erlang terms incorrectly due to a bug
            in ei_format, which is now corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4777 Aux Id: seq8099 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>
</chapter>