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

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<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>Tools Release Notes</title>
    <prepared></prepared>
    <docno></docno>
    <date></date>
    <rev></rev>
    <file>notes.xml</file>
  </header>
  <p>This document describes the changes made to the Tools application.</p>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.6.3</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Declare indentation options as "safe" in erlang-mode for
	    Emacs</p>
          <p>
	    Emacs has a facility for setting options on a per-file
	    basis based on comments in the source file. By default,
	    all options are considered "unsafe", and the user is
	    queried before the variable is set. This patch declares
	    the variables erlang-indent-level, erlang-indent-guard
	    and erlang-argument-indent to be safe, if the value
	    specified in the source file is valid.</p>
          <p>
	    Such declarations usually look like this:</p>
          <p>
	    %% -*- erlang-indent-level: 2 -*-</p>
          <p>
	    and appear on the first line of the file. (thanks to
	    Magnus Henoch)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-9122</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>


    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Cover has been improved to take less memory and allow
	    parallel analysis of cover data. Data collection from
	    nodes is now done in parallel and it is now possible to
	    issue multiple analyse and analyse_to_file requests at
	    the same time. A new function call async_analyse_to_file
	    has also been introduced, see the documentation for more
	    details.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-9043 Aux Id: seq11771 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.6.2</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>eprof: API sort mismatch has now been fixed. </p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8853</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    eprof: fix division by zero in statistics</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8963</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.6.1</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    <c>cover</c> will now show ampersand characters in the
	    source code correctly. (Thanks to Tom Moertel.)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8776</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.6</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>A race condition affecting Cover has been removed.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8469</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Emacs improvements:</p>
          <p>
	    Fixed emacs-mode installation problems.</p>
          <p>
	    Fixed a couple of -spec and -type indentation and
	    font-lock problems.</p>
          <p>
	    Fixed error messages on emacs-21.</p>
          <p>
	    Magnus Henoch fixed several issues.</p>
          <p>
	    Ralf Doering, Klas Johansson and Chris Bernard
	    contributed various emacs-eunit improvements.</p>
          <p>
	    Klas Johansson and Dave Peticolas added emacs-flymake
	    support.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8530</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>


    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>Xref has been updated to use the <c>re</c> module
	    instead of the deprecated <c>regexp</c> module.</p>
          <p>
	    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8472</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>When given the option <c>{builtins,true}</c> Xref now
	    adds calls to operators.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8647</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>Tools 2.6.5.1</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
            <p>A bug concerning bit comprehensions has been fixed
            in Cover. The bug was introduced in R13B03. 
            (Thanks to Matthew Sackman.)</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-8340</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
        Add lock profiling tool.</p>
          <p>
        The Lock profiling tool, lcnt, can make use of the
        internal lock statistics when the runtime system is built
        with this feature enabled.</p>
          <p>
        This provides a mechanism to examine potential lock
        bottlenecks within the runtime itself.</p>
          <p>
        - Add erts_debug:lock_counters({copy_save, bool()}). This
        option enables or disables statistics saving for
        destroyed processes and ets-tables. Enabling this might
        consume a lot of memory.</p>
          <p>
        - Add id-numbering for lock classes which is otherwise
        undefined.</p>
          <p>
        Own Id: OTP-8424</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>
        emacs: Moved code skeletons to a separate file and and
        added a configurable variable to choose skeleton. Thanks
        Dave Peticolas.</p>
          <p>
        Own Id: OTP-8446</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.5</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
            <p>The coverage analysis tool <c>cover</c> has been
            improved when it comes to handling list and bit string
            comprehensions (a counter for each qualifier), bit syntax
            expressions (the Value and Size expressions), and try
            expressions (the body called <c>Exprs</c> in the Reference
            Manual). A few (not all) situations where several
            expressions are put on the same line are also handled
            better than before.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-8188 Aux Id: seq11397</p>
        </item>
        <item>
            <p>When loading Cover compiled code on remote nodes 
            running code in the loaded module, a <c>badarg</c>
            failure was sometimes the result. This bug has been fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-8270 Aux Id: seq11423</p>
        </item>
        <item>
            <p>The short-circuit operators <c>andalso</c> and
            <c>orelse</c> are now handled correctly by the coverage
            analysis tool <c>cover</c> (it is no longer checked
            that the second argument returns a Boolean value.)</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-8273</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.4</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p><c>cover</c> now properly escapes greater-than and
	    less-than characters in comments in HTML reports. (Thanks
	    to Magnus Henoch.)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7939</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.3</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
            xref:start/1 does now allow anonymous XREF processes to
            be started</p>
          <p>
            Own Id: OTP-7831</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.2</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>A bug in the Xref scanner has been fixed.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7423</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>A bug in Fprof where the function 'undefined' appeared
	    to call 'undefined' has been corrected.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7509</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6.1</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
	    <p>The documentation has been updated so as to reflect
	    the last updates of the Erlang shell as well as the minor
	    modifications of the control sequence <c>p</c> of the
	    <c>io_lib</c> module.</p> <p>Superfluous empty lines have
	    been removed from code examples and from Erlang shell
	    examples.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6944 Aux Id: OTP-6554, OTP-6911 </p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p><c>tuple_size/1</c> and <c>byte_size/1</c> have been
	    substituted for <c>size/1</c>.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7009</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>The coverage analysis tool <c>cover</c> now handles
	    the short-circuit Boolean expressions <c>andalso/2</c>
	    and <c>orelse/2</c> properly.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7095</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Tools 2.6</title>

    <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The <c>cover</c> tool could use huge amounts of memory
	    when used in a distributed system.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-6758</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>


  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Missing buffer-local declaration in erlang.el has been
            added. Before this fix there could arise problems in
            other emacs modes after visiting a buffer using the
            erlang mode.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6721</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Key-map for 'backward-delete-char-untabif updated to work
            properly with Xemacs.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6723</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Minor updates of Xref.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6586</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Minor Makefile changes.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6689 Aux Id: OTP-6742 </p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>"C-u C-c C-k" now does a compile with both "debug_info"
            and "export_all".</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6741</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.4.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Changes due to internal interface changes in the erts
            application which are needed at compile-time. No
            functionality has been changed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6611 Aux Id: OTP-6580 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.4</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Made change to support the function erlang-find-tag for
            xemacs and emacs-21.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6512</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Minor updates of xref for future compatibility.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6513</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p><c>eprof</c> did not work reliably in the SMP emulator,
            because the trace receiver process could not process the
            trace messages fast enough. Therefore, <c>eprof</c> now
            blocks the other schedulers while profiling.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6373</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Fprof traces could become truncated for the SMP emulator.
            This bug has now been corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6246</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>eprof now works somewhat better in the SMP emulator.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6152</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Fixed some bugs in <c>make</c>:</p>
          <p><c>make:files/1,2</c> can now handle a file in another
            directory as argument, similar to <c>make:all/0,1</c>.</p>
          <p>When specifying a file name including the <c>.erl</c>
            extension in <c>Emakefile</c>, <c>make:all/0,1</c> looked
            for the object code in the wrong place.</p>
          <p>When specifying a file name including the <c>.erl</c>
            extension in <c>Emakefile</c> and some compile options
            for the file, <c>make:files/0,1</c> did not use the
            options as it should do.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6057 Aux Id: seq10299</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p><c>cover</c>: When <c>cover:stop()</c> was called,
            the cover compiled code was not unloaded (as stated in
            the documentation) but simply marked as 'old'. This
            meant that processes lingering in (or with funs
            referencing to) the cover compiled code would survive
            even when the cover server and its ETS tables was
            terminated.</p>
          <p>Now the cover compiled code is unloaded, meaning that
            processes lingering in/with references to it will be
            killed when <c>cover:stop</c> is called, instead of
            later crashing with <c>badarg</c> when trying to bump
            counters in ETS tables no longer existing.</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Replaced call to deprecated function
            <c>file:file_info/1</c> with call to
            <c>filelib:is_dir/1</c> and <c>filelib:is_regular/1</c>
            in <c>tags.erl</c>.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6079</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.7</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>A bug in <c>fprof</c> profiling causing erroneous
            inconsistent trace failure has been corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5922 Aux Id: seq10203 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.6</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Emacs: <c>erlang-man-function</c> and
            <c>erlang-man-module</c> used a pattern matching to find
            the requested module that sometimes yielded unexpected
            results. For example, <c>erlang-man-module file</c> would
            display the man page for <c>CosFileTransfer_File</c>.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5746 Aux Id: seq10096</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Some compiler warnings and Dialyzer warnings were
            eliminated in the Tools application.</p>
          <p>When tracing to a port (which <c>fprof</c> does),
            there could be fake schedule out/schedule in messages
            sent for a process that had exited.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5757</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.5</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The cross reference tool <c>xref</c> did not handle the new
            <c>fun M:F/A</c> construct properly. This problem has been
            fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5653</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.4</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The <c>cover</c> tool did not escape '&lt;' and '&gt;' not
            being part of HTML tags in HTML log files.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5588</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>It is now possible to encrypt the debug information in
            beam files, to help keep the source code secret. See
            <c>compile(3)</c> for how to provide the key for encrypting,
            and <c>beam_lib(3)</c> for how to provide the key for
            decryption so that tools such as Debugger, <c>xref</c>, or
            <c>cover</c> can be used.</p>
          <p>The <c>beam_lib:chunks/2</c> functions now accepts an
            additional chunk type '<c>compile_info</c>' to retrieve
            the compilation information directly as a term. (Thanks
            to Tobias Lindahl.)</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5460 Aux Id: seq9787</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The <c>cover</c> tool could not analyze empty modules on
            module level.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5418</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Tools 2.4.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The <c>xref</c> analysis <c>locals_not_used</c> could
            return too many functions. This problem has been fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5071</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>The <c>cover</c> tool could not always compile parse
            transformed modules. This problem has been fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5305</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>
</chapter>