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>2010</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 3.7</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>compact IEEE 754 double encoding in external binary
	    format for ei</p> <list><item><p>Implement the compact
	    IEEE 754 double encoding in external binary format for
	    ei. Encoding for ei now always produces the NEW_FLOAT_EXT
	    format. Decoding and term printing handle both the old
	    ERL_FLOAT_EXT encoding and the new NEW_FLOAT_EXT
	    encoding. </p></item> <item><p>Legacy erl_interface code
	    also handles the new encoding, but still produces the
	    ERL_FLOAT_EXT encoding by default.</p></item>
	    <item><p>Also enable the DFLAG_NEW_FLOATS distribution
	    flag.</p></item> <item><p>ei_get_type() will return
	    ERL_FLOAT_EXT regardless if the external format is
	    encoded with ERL_FLOAT_EXT or NEW_FLOAT_EXT for
	    doubles.</p></item> <item><p>Reduce the number of copies
	    of the code for encoding and decoding doubles throughout
	    ei and erl_interface by instead calling the ei encoding
	    and decoding functions wherever possible.</p></item>
	    <item><p>Restore commented-out float tests in
	    ei_decode_SUITE and ei_encode_SUITE in
	    lib/erl_interface/test. Modify them to make them match
	    the style of other tests in the same suites.</p></item>
	    </list> <p>These changes are based on an ei float patch
	    from Serge Aleynikov originally submitted against R12B-2
	    in July 2008 and reworked by Steve Vinoski May 2010.</p>
          <p>
	    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8684</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Erl_Interface 3.6.5</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Document debug support.</p>
          <p>
	    Debug trace output for connection activity could be
	    enabled setting the trace level as an integer to the
	    EI_TRACELEVEL environment variable. This option could
	    also be read and set from a running program using
	    ei_get_tracelevel(void) and ei_set_tracelevel(int).</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-5037</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>Cross compilation improvements and other build system
	    improvements.</p>
	    <p>Most notable:</p> <list><item> Lots of cross
	    compilation improvements. The old cross compilation
	    support was more or less non-existing as well as broken.
	    Please, note that the cross compilation support should
	    still be considered as experimental. Also note that old
	    cross compilation configurations cannot be used without
	    modifications. For more information on cross compiling
	    Erlang/OTP see the <c>$ERL_TOP/INSTALL-CROSS.md</c> file.
	    </item><item> Support for staged install using <url
	    href="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/DESTDIR.html">DESTDIR</url>.
	    The old broken <c>INSTALL_PREFIX</c> has also been fixed.
	    For more information see the <c>$ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md</c>
	    file. </item><item> Documentation of the <c>release</c>
	    target of the top <c>Makefile</c>. For more information
	    see the <c>$ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md</c> file. </item><item>
	    <c>make install</c> now by default creates relative
	    symbolic links instead of absolute ones. For more
	    information see the <c>$ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md</c> file.
	    </item><item> <c>$ERL_TOP/configure --help=recursive</c>
	    now works and prints help for all applications with
	    <c>configure</c> scripts. </item><item> Doing <c>make
	    install</c>, or <c>make release</c> directly after
	    <c>make all</c> no longer triggers miscellaneous
	    rebuilds. </item><item> Existing bootstrap system is now
	    used when doing <c>make install</c>, or <c>make
	    release</c> without a preceding <c>make all</c>.
	    </item><item> The <c>crypto</c> and <c>ssl</c>
	    applications use the same runtime library path when
	    dynamically linking against <c>libssl.so</c> and
	    <c>libcrypto.so</c>. The runtime library search path has
	    also been extended. </item><item> The <c>configure</c>
	    scripts of <c>erl_interface</c> and <c>odbc</c> now
	    search for thread libraries and thread library quirks the
	    same way as <c>erts</c> do. </item><item> The
	    <c>configure</c> script of the <c>odbc</c> application
	    now also looks for odbc libraries in <c>lib64</c> and
	    <c>lib/64</c> directories when building on a 64-bit
	    system. </item><item> The <c>config.h.in</c> file in the
	    <c>erl_interface</c> application is now automatically
	    generated in instead of statically updated which reduces
	    the risk of <c>configure</c> tests without any effect.
	    </item></list>
	    <p>(Thanks to Henrik Riomar for suggestions and
	    testing)</p>
	    <p>(Thanks to Winston Smith for the AVR32-Linux cross
	    configuration and testing)</p>
          <p>
	    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8323</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Change erroneous "\\0" in documentation files
	    <c>erl_notes.xml</c> and <c> erl_eterm.xml</c>.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8326</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Allow <c>erl_match()</c> to match <c>ERL_LONGLONG</c> and
	    <c>ERL_U_LONGLONG</c> terms (Thanks to Scott Lystig
	    Fritchie).</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8400</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<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>