View Source Kernel Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Kernel application.

Kernel 10.0.1

Improvements and New Features

Polish the logger documentation.
Own Id: OTP-19118 Aux Id: PR-8534

Kernel 10.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a crash when calling file:delete/2 with an empty option list.
Own Id: OTP-18590 Aux Id: PR-7220
New functions have been added to the undocumented module m:inet_dns that take a flag to specify if encode/decode is for mDNS. This affects how CLASS values in the private range, with the top bit set, are handled.
Own Id: OTP-18878 Aux Id: GH-7718, OTP-17734
The error information for erlang:phash/2 has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-18904 Aux Id: PR-7960
get_until requests using the I/O protocol now correctly return a binary or list when eof is the last item returned by the callback.
Own Id: OTP-18930 Aux Id: PR-7993, GH-4992
Calling logger:add_handlers/1 with config option now works.
Own Id: OTP-18954 Aux Id: GH-8061, PR-8076
The code:del_path/1 function now also works on paths added through -pa, -pz , -path and the boot script.
Own Id: OTP-18959 Aux Id: GH-6692, PR-7697
A call to socket:[recv|recvfrom|recvmsg]/* with Timeout = 0 on Windows could cause a (case clause) crash if data is immediately available.
Own Id: OTP-19063 Aux Id: OTP-18835
Improve heuristic for when a characters is wide in the shell for systems with old libc versions.
Own Id: OTP-19087 Aux Id: PR-8382
Fix reading a line when reading from io:user/0 to not consider \r without \n to be a new line when erl is started with -noshell.
Own Id: OTP-19088 Aux Id: PR-8396

Improvements and New Features

Added file:read_file/2 with a raw option for reading files without going through the file server.
Own Id: OTP-18589 Aux Id: PR-7220
The undocumented Erlang DNS resolver library (inet_dns and inet_res) has been augmented to handle IXFR, NOTIFY, UPDATE and TSIG records. With this some bug fixes and code cleanup has been done, and the resolver used in the test suite has been changed to Knot DNS. See the source code.
Kudos to Alexander Clouter that did almost all the work!
Own Id: OTP-18713 Aux Id: PR-6985, GH-6985
The ebin directories for escripts are now cached.
Own Id: OTP-18778 Aux Id: PR-7556
-callback attributes haven been added to application, logger_handler, and logger_formatter.
Own Id: OTP-18795 Aux Id: PR-7703
Progress reports from before logger is started are now logged when log level is set to debug.
Own Id: OTP-18807 Aux Id: PR-7732 ERIERL-985
The code:where_is_file/2 and code:which/1 functions now check for existence of the file directly instead of listing the content of each directory in the code path.
Own Id: OTP-18816 Aux Id: PR-7711
Type specs has been added to the logger:Level/1,2,3 functions.
Own Id: OTP-18820 Aux Id: PR-7779
For inet_backend = socket, setting the active socket option alone, to once, true or N has been optimized, as well as the corresponding data delivery.
Own Id: OTP-18835
New functions socket:sendv/* for sending I/O vectors have been added.
Own Id: OTP-18845
The shell now pages long output from the documentation help command (h(Module)), auto completions and the search command.
Own Id: OTP-18846 Aux Id: PR-7845
Native coverage support has been implemented in the JIT. It will automatically be used by the cover tool to reduce the execution overhead when running cover-compiled code.
There are also new APIs to support native coverage without using the cover tool.
To instrument code for native coverage it must be compiled with the line_coverage option.
To enable native coverage in the runtime system, start it like so:
```
$ erl +JPcover true
```
There are also the following new functions for supporting native coverage:
- code:coverage_support/0
- code:get_coverage/2
- code:reset_coverage/1
- code:get_coverage_mode/0
- code:get_coverage_mode/1
- code:set_coverage_mode/1
Own Id: OTP-18856 Aux Id: PR-7856
Optimized code loading by moving certain operations from the code server to the caller.
Own Id: OTP-18941 Aux Id: PR-7981
The documentation has been migrated to use Markdown and ExDoc.
Own Id: OTP-18955 Aux Id: PR-8026
Application startup has been optimized by removing an intermediary process.
Own Id: OTP-18963 Aux Id: PR-8042
The existing experimental support for archive files will be changed in a future release. The support for having an archive in an escript will remain, but the support for using archives in a release will either become more limited or completely removed.
As of Erlang/OTP 27, the function code:lib_dir/2, the -code_path_choice flag, and using erl_prim_loader for reading members of an archive are deprecated.
To remain compatible with future version of Erlang/OTP escript scripts that need to retrieve data files from its archive should use escript:extract/2 instead of erl_prim_loader and code:lib_dir/2.
POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY
Own Id: OTP-18966 Aux Id: PR-8091
The undocumented and deprecated file:pid2name function has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-18967 Aux Id: PR-8092
There is a new module trace in Kernel providing the same trace functionality as erlang:trace/3 and erlang:trace_pattern/3, but with the addition of dynamic isolated trace sessions.
Own Id: OTP-18980
Error logging has been improved when the io:standard_io/0 reader and/or writer terminates with an error.
Own Id: OTP-18989 Aux Id: PR-8103
inet_backend = socket has been optimized and reworked to be more compatible with the original inet_backend = inet.
Own Id: OTP-19004 Aux Id: OTP-18835
Add an simple example (echo server) )to the socket users guide.
Own Id: OTP-19042
inet:i/0,1,2 has been improved to allow port numbers to be shown explicitly.
Own Id: OTP-19053 Aux Id: #6724
The socket documentation has been reworked, and due to that a few details were fixed:
- socket:is_supported/1 now returns true for example for protocols that is a "category", not an item.
- socket:cancel_monitor/1 no longer badargs for a monitor that was set by another process, instead it returns false as for other unknown reference()s.
Own Id: OTP-19054
Add stdin, stdout and stderr keys to io:getopts/1 on io:standard_io/0 to indicate if the respective I/O device is backed by a terminal.
Own Id: OTP-19089 Aux Id: PR-8396

Kernel 9.2.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix the shell Job Control Mode to not crash when typing TAB or CTRL+R.
Own Id: OTP-19072 Aux Id: PR-8391
Fix calls to blocking application APIs to throw an exception with reason terminating if called when the system is terminating.
This is done in order to avoid deadlocks during shutdown or restart.
Own Id: OTP-19078 Aux Id: PR-8422

Kernel 9.2.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When using IPv6, classic gen_udp failed to add (group) membership (drop was used instead).
Own Id: OTP-19049 Aux Id: #8176
The check in inet_res of the RD bit has been relaxed slightly.
Own Id: OTP-19056 Aux Id: PR-8312, OTP-17323

Kernel 9.2.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix performance bug when using io:fread to read from standard_io. This regression was introduced in OTP 26.0.
Own Id: OTP-18910 Aux Id: PR-7933 GH-7924
A bug in the code server could cause it to crash in some concurrent scenarios. This bug was introduced in 26.1.
Own Id: OTP-18948 Aux Id: PR-8046
Fixed gen_udp:open/2 type spec to include already supported module socket address types.
Own Id: OTP-18990 Aux Id: GH-8158
Fix reading of password for ssh client when in user_interactive mode.
Own Id: OTP-19007 Aux Id: ERIERL-1049

Kernel 9.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix group (that is the shell) to properly handle when an get_until callback function returned {done, eof, []} when an eof was detected.
Own Id: OTP-18901

Kernel 9.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

For inet_backend = socket, an unexpected receive error such as etimedout caused the receiving state machine server to crash. This bug has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-18749 Aux Id: GH-7608
Fix bug where reading using file from a unicode enabled standard_io, standard_error or any other group backed device would result in incorrect values being returned or a crash.
Now instead a no_translation error is returned to the caller when unicode data is read using file. See Using Unicode in the STDLIB User's Guide for more details on how to correctly read from standard_io.
Own Id: OTP-18800 Aux Id: PR-7714 GH-7591
The native resolver interface module has gotten a rewrite of its ETS table handling to minimize term copying, and also to move the handling of client time-outs to the clients, which helps the native resolver name server from digging itself into a tar pit when heavily loaded.
Own Id: OTP-18812 Aux Id: ERIERL-997
Replaced unintentional Erlang Public License 1.1 headers in some files with the intended Apache License 2.0 header.
Own Id: OTP-18815 Aux Id: PR-7780
Fix bug in pg if a client process both monitored a group/scope and joined a group. The termination of such process resulted in crash of the pg server process.
Own Id: OTP-18833 Aux Id: GH-7625, PR-7659
Fix crash when using file:consult and the underlying file read returns an error while reading.
Own Id: OTP-18873 Aux Id: PR-7831
Corrected gen_tcp_socket listen option handling.
Own Id: OTP-18883 Aux Id: #7764

Improvements and New Features

Add Windows support for DGRAM socket connect.
Own Id: OTP-18762
Document the, previously opaque, types select_tag() and completion_tag().
Own Id: OTP-18818 Aux Id: #7337

Kernel 9.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed an issue with truncated crash slogans on failed emulator start.
Own Id: OTP-18623 Aux Id: GH-7344
Fix shell:start_interactive function specification.
Own Id: OTP-18628 Aux Id: GH-7280
Fix code:get_doc/1 to return missing, when it can't find erts instead of crashing.
Own Id: OTP-18654 Aux Id: PR-7404
Function socket:close/1 could cause a VM crash on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-18669 Aux Id: OTP-18029
Fix deadlock when erl.exe is used as part of a pipe on Windows and trying to set the encoding of the standard_io device.
Own Id: OTP-18675 Aux Id: PR-7473 GH-7459
Expanded the documentation about how to use the standard_io, standard_error and user I/O devices.
Added the types io:standard_io/0, io:standard:error/0 and io:user/0.
Own Id: OTP-18676 Aux Id: PR-7473 GH-7459
Fix logger's overload protection mechanism to only fetch memory used by messages when needed.
Own Id: OTP-18677 Aux Id: PR-7418 GH-7417
Fixed a number of socket-related issues causing incompatibilities with gen_tcp and gen_udp respectively.
Own Id: OTP-18685
gen_tcp:connect with socket address and socket (inet-) backend fails because of missing callback function.
Own Id: OTP-18707 Aux Id: #7530
The DNS RR cache used by `inet_res` has been fixed to preserve insert order, which is beneficial when the DNS server returns RRs in some specific order for e.g load balancing purposes.
Own Id: OTP-18731 Aux Id: GH-7577, PR-7578
The options `reuseport`, `reuseport_lb` and `exclusiveaddruse` were accidentally not allowed for e.g `gen_udp:open/1,2`, which has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-18734 Aux Id: OTP-18344, PR-6522, GH-6461, GH-7569
gen_udp:recv/* for Unix Domain Socket in binary mode and passive mode has been fixed to not crash.
Own Id: OTP-18747 Aux Id: GH-7605
Fixed issue where cursor would not be placed at the end of the expression when navigating shell history.
Own Id: OTP-18757 Aux Id: PR-7631

Improvements and New Features

Update gen_tcp_socket and gen_udp_socket to handle 'completion' (socket on Windows).
Own Id: OTP-18586 Aux Id: OTP-18029
Add support for Unix Domain Sockets (only for STREAM sockets) on Windows for 'socket'.
Own Id: OTP-18611 Aux Id: OTP-18029, #5024
Add basic support for socket ioctl on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-18660
The file:location/0 type is now exported.
Own Id: OTP-18681
Add support for (Windows) socket option exclusiveaddruse.
Own Id: OTP-18686
[socket] Add support for the 'nopush' option.
Own Id: OTP-18687
Add support for socket option 'BSP STATE'.
Own Id: OTP-18693
Add tcp socket options 'keepcnt', 'keepidle' and 'keepintvl'.
Own Id: OTP-18698
Add support for misc (Windows) socket options ('max_msg_size' and 'maxdg').
Own Id: OTP-18710
The keyboard shortcuts for the shell are now configurable.
Own Id: OTP-18754 Aux Id: PR-7604 PR-7647
Optimized code_server to reduce repeated work when loading the same module concurrently.
Own Id: OTP-18755 Aux Id: PR-7503

Kernel 9.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix bug where when you entered Alt+Enter in the terminal, the cursor would move to the last line, instead of moving to the next line.
Own Id: OTP-18580 Aux Id: PR-7242
Fix so that the shell does not crash on startup when termcap is not available.
Own Id: OTP-18624 Aux Id: GH-7296
Multiple socket:accept calls issue. When making multiple accept calls, only the last call is active.
Own Id: OTP-18635 Aux Id: #7328
Fix the shell to ignore terminal delay when the terminal capabilities report that they should be used.
Own Id: OTP-18636 Aux Id: PR-7352 GH-7308
Fix "oldshell" to echo characters while typing on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-18637 Aux Id: PR-7359 GH-7324
Fix eof handling when reading from stdin when erlang is started using -noshell.
Own Id: OTP-18640 Aux Id: PR-7384 GH-7368 GH-7286 GH-6881
On Windows, a call to the function socket:close, when there are waiting active calls to read, write or accept functions, could hang.
Own Id: OTP-18646
Fix issues when reading or configuring standard_io on Windows when erl.exe is started using -noshell flag.
Own Id: OTP-18649 Aux Id: GH-7261 PR-7400
gen_udp:connect with inet_backend = socket fails when the Address is a hostname (string or atom).
Own Id: OTP-18650
Fixed problem which would cause shell to crash if particular escape sequence was written to stdout.
Own Id: OTP-18651 Aux Id: PR-7242
Fixed problem where output would disappear if it was received after a prompt was written in the shell.
Own Id: OTP-18652 Aux Id: PR-7242
Fix a crash where the location of erts could not be found in rebar3 dev builds.
Own Id: OTP-18656 Aux Id: PR-7404 GH-7390
Introduce the KERNEL application parameter standard_io_encoding that can be used to set the default encoding for standard_io. This option needs to be set to latin1 if the application wants to treat all input data as bytes rather than utf-8 encoded characters.
Own Id: OTP-18657 Aux Id: GH-7230 PR-7384

Kernel 9.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The POSIX error exdev was sometimes incorrectly described as "cross domain link" in some error messages.
Own Id: OTP-18578 Aux Id: GH-7213
Corrected the socket send function description (send with Timeout = nowait). The send function(s) could not return {ok, {RestData, SelectInfo}}
Own Id: OTP-18584 Aux Id: #7238

Kernel 9.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a bug where duplicate keys were allowed in the .app file of an application. Duplicate keys are now rejected and the application will not start if they exist.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18210 Aux Id: GH-5877 PR-5878
Fix inconsistent handling in logger_formatter of the branched values in conditional branches. For example using msg in a conditional branch would not be formatted as it should before this fix.
Own Id: OTP-18225 Aux Id: PR-6036
Fix the logger_std_h handler to log to standard_error if logging to standard_io fails for any reason.
Own Id: OTP-18226 Aux Id: PR-6253
Fix the TLS distribution to work when starting Erlang in embedded mode and a connection is done before kernel is fully started.
Own Id: OTP-18248 Aux Id: PR-6227 GH-6085
erl -remsh has been improved to provide better error reasons and work when using a shell without terminal support (that is an "oldshell").
Own Id: OTP-18271 Aux Id: PR-6279
Fix logging of log events generated before kernel is started to not fail if the code for formatting those log messaged have not yet been loaded.
Own Id: OTP-18286 Aux Id: PR-5955
proc_lib:start*/* has become synchronous when the started process fails. This requires that a failing process use a new function proc_lib:init_fail/2,3, or exits, to indicate failure. All OTP behaviours have been fixed to do this.
All these start functions now consume the 'EXIT' message from a process link for all error returns. Previously it was only the start_link/* functions that did this, and only when the started function exited, not when it used init_ack/1,2 or init_fail/2,3 to create the return value.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18471 Aux Id: GH-6339, PR-6843
Fixed a bug where file:read(standard_io, ...) unexpectedly returned eof in binary mode.
Own Id: OTP-18486 Aux Id: PR-6881
Return type for seq_trace:get_token/1 fixed.
Own Id: OTP-18528 Aux Id: PR-7009
Looking up, connecting to and sending to a host with an empty name is now handled by trying to look up the address of the root domain, which fails. Previously some of these operations caused an internal exception, which contradicted type specifications.
Own Id: OTP-18543 Aux Id: GH-6353
Replaced a regex with a special case handling of ANSI Select Graphic Rendition escape characters, to speed up io output that make use of these escape sequences.
Own Id: OTP-18547 Aux Id: PR-7092

Improvements and New Features

The Erlang shell has been improved to support the following features:
- Auto-complete variables, record names, record field names, map keys, function parameter types and filenames.
- Open external editor in the shell (with C-o) to edit the current expression in an editor.
- Support defining records (with types), functions and function typespecs, and custom types in the shell.
- Do not save pager commands, and input to io:getline in history.
Own Id: OTP-14835 Aux Id: PR-5924
The TTY/terminal subsystem has been rewritten by moving more code to Erlang from the old linked-in driver and implementing all the I/O primitives needed in a NIF instead.
On Unix platforms the user should not notice a lot of difference, besides better handling of unicode characters and fixing of some long standing bugs.
Windows users will notice that erl.exe has the same functionality as a normal Unix shell and that werl.exe has been removed and replaced with a symlink to erl.exe. This makes the Windows Erlang terminal experience identical to that of Unix.
The re-write brings with it a number of bug fixes and feature additions:
- The TTY is now reset when Erlang exits, fixing zsh to not break when terminating an Erlang session.
- standard_error now uses the same unicode mode as standard_io.
- Hitting backspace when searching the shell history with an empty search string no longer breaks the shell.
- Tab expansion now works on remote nodes started using the JCL interface.
- It is now possible to configure the shell slogan and the session slogans (that is the texts that appear when you start an Erlang shell). See the kernel documentation for more details.
- Added shell:start_interactive for starting the interactive shell from a non-interactive Erlang session (for example an escript).
- On Windows, when starting in detached mode the standard handler are now set to nul devices instead of being unset.
- Standard I/O now always defaults to unicode mode if supported. Previously the default was latin1 if the runtime system had been started with -oldshell or -noshell (for example in an escript). To send raw bytes over standard out, one now explicitly has to specify io:setopts(standard_io, [{encoding, latin1}]).
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17932 Aux Id: PR-6144 GH-3150 GH-3390 GH-4343 GH-4225
Add support for socket on Windows.
- Pre release status.
- Error codes not finalized.
- No explicit support for Windows specific options (socket options, flags for read and write).
- New async api for Windows (completion). See the Asynchronous calls chapter in the (Socket Usage) Users Guide.
- To ensure platform independence, gentcp and gen_udp is _intended to be used (not yet updated).
Own Id: OTP-18029
As announced since the release of OTP 24, support for:
- version 4 node container types in the external term format are now mandatory. That is, references supporting up to 5 32-bit integer identifiers, and process and port identifiers with support for 64-bit data storage. The distribution flag DFLAG_V4_NC is therefor now also mandatory. OTP has since OTP 24 supported this. Also note that the external format produced by term_to_binary() and term_to_iovec() will unconditionally produce pids, ports, and references supporting this larger format.
- the new link protocol introduced in OTP 23.3 is now mandatory. The distribution flag DFLAG_UNLINK_ID is therefor now also mandatory.
Due to the above, OTP 26 nodes will refuse to connect to OTP nodes from releases prior to OTP 24.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18140 Aux Id: PR-6072
Support for Kernel TLS (kTLS), has been added to the SSL application, for TLS distribution (-proto_dist inet_tls), the SSL option {ktls, true}. Using this for general SSL sockets is uncomfortable, undocumented and not recommended since it requires very platform dependent raw options.
This, for now, only works for some not too old Linux distributions. Roughly, a kernel 5.2.0 or later with support for UserLand Protocols and the kernel module tls is required.
Own Id: OTP-18235 Aux Id: PR-6104, PR-5840
Add code:get_doc/2 which adds support to fetch documentation skeletons of functions using debug_info chunks instead of eep48 doc chunks.
Own Id: OTP-18261 Aux Id: PR-5924
The Erlang shell's auto-completion when typing tab has been changed to happen after the editing current line instead of before it.
This behaviour can be configured using a the shell_expand_location STDLIB configuration parameter.
Own Id: OTP-18278 Aux Id: PR-6260
Typing Ctrl+L in a shell now clears the screen and redraws the current line instead of only redrawing the current line. To only redraw the current line, you must now type Alt+L. This brings the behaviour of Ctrl+L closer to how bash and other shells work.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18285 Aux Id: PR-6262
gen_server optimized by caching callback functions
Own Id: OTP-18305 Aux Id: PR-5831
Prepare the pg communication protocol for upgrade. The plan is for OTP-28 nodes to be able to use an upgraded pg protocol while still being able to talk with OTP 26 nodes.
Own Id: OTP-18327 Aux Id: PR-6433
New disk_log log type rotate, where the log files are compressed upon rotation.
Own Id: OTP-18331 Aux Id: ERIERL-870
The following inet:setopts/2 options have been introduced:
- reuseport - Reuse of local port. Load balancing may or may not be provided depending on underlying OS.
- reuseport_lb - Reuse of local port. Load balancing provided.
- exclusiveaddruse - Exclusive address/port usage on Windows. This socket option is Windows specific and will silently be ignored on other systems.
The behavior of setting reuseaddr on Windows have changed in a backwards incompatible way. The underlying SO_REUSEADDR socket option is now only set if both the reusaddr and the reuseport inet options have been set. This since the underlying SO_REUSEADDR socket option on Windows behaves similar to how BSD behaves if both the underlying socket options SO_REUSEADDR and SO_REUSEPORT have been set. See the documentation of the reuseaddr option for more information.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18344 Aux Id: PR-6522, PR-6944, OTP-18324, PR-6481, GH-6461
Replace size/1 with either tuple_size/1 or byte_size/1
The size/1 BIF is not optimized by the JIT, and its use can result in worse types for Dialyzer.
When one knows that the value being tested must be a tuple, tuple_size/1 should always be preferred.
When one knows that the value being tested must be a binary, byte_size/1 should be preferred. However, byte_size/1 also accepts a bitstring (rounding up size to a whole number of bytes), so one must make sure that the call to byte_size/ is preceded by a call to is_binary/1 to ensure that bitstrings are rejected. Note that the compiler removes redundant calls to is_binary/1, so if one is not sure whether previous code had made sure that the argument is a binary, it does not harm to add an is_binary/1 test immediately before the call to byte_size/1.
Own Id: OTP-18405 Aux Id: GH-6672,PR-6702,PR-6768,PR-6700,PR-6769,PR-6812,PR-6814
The function file:pid2name/1 is deprecated and will be removed in Erlang/OTP 27.
Own Id: OTP-18419
The modules Erlang DNS resolver inet_res and helper modules have been updated for RFC6891; to handle OPT RR with DNSSEC OK (DO) bit.
Own Id: OTP-18442 Aux Id: PR-6786, GH-6606
Introduced application:get_supervisor/1.
Own Id: OTP-18444 Aux Id: PR-6035
Handling of on_load modules during boot has been improved by adding an extra step in the boot order for embedded mode that runs all on_load handlers, instead of relying on explicit invocation of them, later, when the kernel supervision tree starts.
This is mostly a code improvement and OTP internal simplification to avoid future bugs and to simplify code maintenance.
Own Id: OTP-18447
Reduce contention on the code_server by doing the code preparation on the client.
Own Id: OTP-18448 Aux Id: PR-6736
Added a mode to ensure_all_loaded, to start children application and their dependencies concurrently.
Own Id: OTP-18451 Aux Id: PR-6737
Cache OTP boot code paths, to limit how many folders that are being accessed during a module lookup. Can be disabled with -cache_boot_path false. OTP boot code paths consists of ERL_LIB environment variables. The various otp/*/ebin folders. And the {path, ...} clauses in the init script.
Own Id: OTP-18452 Aux Id: PR-6729
Erlang distribution code in Kernel and SSL has been refactored a bit to facilitate debugging and re-usability, which shouldn't have any noticeable effects on behaviour or performance.
Own Id: OTP-18456
Add cache attribute to code path apis.
Added an optional cache/nocache argument to all code:add_path, code:set_path, and code:replace_path* functions. These functions will then avoid doing file-accesses if they are cached. Cache can be cleared with code:clear_cache/0. Added code:del_paths/1 to make it easier to clear multiple paths.
Own Id: OTP-18466 Aux Id: PR-6832
Deprecates dbg:stop_clear/0 because it is simply a function alias to dbg:stop/0
Own Id: OTP-18478 Aux Id: GH-6903
Improvements to code:ensure_modules_loaded/1: Previously it would prepare modules and then abandon references to said modules if they had on_load callbacks. This pull request makes it so they keep the references around and then serially load them without having to fetch the object code and prepare them again.
Own Id: OTP-18484 Aux Id: PR-6844
The internal DNS resolver has been updated to handle DNS LOC RR:s (RFC 1876). This is an undocumented module, although still used by power users. See the source code.
Own Id: OTP-18510 Aux Id: GH-6098, PR-6982
Reduced memory consumption in global when informing other nodes about lost connections.
Own Id: OTP-18521 Aux Id: PR-7025
The net_kernel, global, and global_group servers now have fully asynchronous distributed signaling enabled all the time which prevents them from ever getting blocked on send of distributed signals.
Documentation about blocking distributed signals has also been improved.
Own Id: OTP-18533 Aux Id: PR-7061
Allow IPv6 addresses as host in http packets decoded by erlang:decode_packet/3 and gen_tcp packet option. The IPv6 address should be enclosed within [] according to RFC2732.
Own Id: OTP-18540 Aux Id: PR-6900
Remove deprecated functions in OTP-26
Own Id: OTP-18542
Removed code:is_module_native/1 since HiPE has been removed. It has since OTP 24 been deprecated and scheduled for removal in OTP 26.
Removed code:rehash/0 since the code path feature no longer is present. It has since OTP 19 been deprecated and has since OTP 24 been scheduled for removal in OTP 26.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18551 Aux Id: PR-7106
Added support for multiple line expressions and navigation in the shell. Added new keybindings:
- navigate up (ctrl+up)/(alt+up)
- navigate down (ctrl+down)/(alt+down)
- insert newline in middle of line (alt+enter)
- navigate top (alt+<)/(alt+shift+up)
- navigate bottom (alt+>)/(alt+shift+down)
- clear current expression (alt+c)
- cancel search (alt+c)
- opening editor on mac (option+o)/(alt+o)
Modifies the prompt for new lines to make it clearer that the prompt has entered multi-line mode. Supports terminal with small window size, recommend not go lower than 7 rows and 40 columns. Modifies the search prompt to support multi-line statements. Redraw the prompt after continuing from JCL menu.
Own Id: OTP-18575 Aux Id: PR-7169

Kernel 8.5.4.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed gen_udp:open/2 type spec to include already supported module socket address types.
Own Id: OTP-19050 Aux Id: OTP-18990

Kernel 8.5.4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

gen_tcp:connect with socket address and socket (inet-) backend fails because of missing callback function.
Own Id: OTP-18707 Aux Id: #7530

Kernel 8.5.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Multiple socket:accept calls issue. When making multiple accept calls, only the last call is active.
Own Id: OTP-18635 Aux Id: #7328
gen_udp:connect with inet_backend = socket fails when the Address is a hostname (string or atom).
Own Id: OTP-18650

Kernel 8.5.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a bug on Windows where file:read_file_info/1 would fail for files with corrupt metadata.
Own Id: OTP-18348 Aux Id: GH-6356
Accept connection setup from OTP 23 and 24 nodes that are not using epmd.
Own Id: OTP-18404 Aux Id: GH-6595, PR-6625

Kernel 8.5.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The tcp connect option 'bind_to_device' could not be used with inet_backend = 'socket'. 'inet' requires value type binarry() and 'socket' requires value type 'string()'.
Own Id: OTP-18357 Aux Id: #6509
Minor issue processing options when calling gen_tcp:connect with a sockaddr() and inet_backend = socket.
Own Id: OTP-18358 Aux Id: #6528

Kernel 8.5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed shutdown crash in gen_tcp socket backend, when the other end closed the socket.
Own Id: OTP-18270 Aux Id: #6331
erl_tar can now read gzip-compressed tar files that are padded. There is a new option compressed_one for file:open/2 that will read a single member from a gzip file,
Own Id: OTP-18289 Aux Id: PR-6343
Fix os:cmd to not translate all exceptions thrown to badarg. For example emfile from erlang:open_port was translated to badarg.
This bug has existed since Erlang/OTP 24.
Own Id: OTP-18291 Aux Id: PR-6382
Spec for function net:if_names/0 incorrect
Own Id: OTP-18296 Aux Id: OTP-16464
Missing ctrl option name transation for TOS and TTL (on FreeBSD) when using gen_udp with the 'socket' inet_backend.
Own Id: OTP-18315
gen_udp:open/2 with option(s) add_membership or drop_membership would drop earlier options.
Own Id: OTP-18323 Aux Id: #6476
The inet:setopts/2 {reuseaddr, true} option will now be ignored on Windows unless the socket is an UDP socket. For more information see the documentation of the reuseaddr option part of the documentation of inet:setopts/2.
Prior to OTP 25 the {reuseaddr, true} option was ignored for all sockets on Windows, but as of OTP 25.0 this was changed so that it was not ignored for any sockets.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18324 Aux Id: GH-6461, PR-6481

Improvements and New Features

The distribution socket option handling in inet_tcp_dist has been cleaned up to clarify which were mandatory and which just had default values.
Own Id: OTP-18293
Improve warning message format for gen_tcp_socket.
Own Id: OTP-18317

Kernel 8.5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Listen sockets created with the socket module, leaked (erlang-) monitors.
Own Id: OTP-18240 Aux Id: #6285
peer nodes failed to halt when the process supervising the control connection crashed. When an alternative control connection was used, this supervision process also quite frequently crashed when the peer node was stopped by the node that started it which caused the peer node to linger without ever halting.
Own Id: OTP-18249 Aux Id: PR-6301

Kernel 8.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed inconsistency bugs in global due to nodeup/nodedown messages not being delivered before/after traffic over connections. Also fixed various other inconsistency bugs and deadlocks in both global_group and global.
As building blocks for these fixes, a new BIF erlang:nodes/2 has been introduced and net_kernel:monitor_nodes/2 has been extended.
The -hidden and -connect_all command line arguments did not work if multiple instances were present on the command line which has been fixed. The new kernel parameter connect_all has also been introduced in order to replace the -connect_all command line argument.
Own Id: OTP-17934 Aux Id: PR-6007
Fixed IPv6 multicast_if and membership socket options.
Own Id: OTP-18091 Aux Id: #5789
Fixed issue with inet:getifaddrs hanging on pure IPv6 Windows
Own Id: OTP-18102 Aux Id: #5904
The type specifications for inet:getopts/2 and inet:setopts/2 have been corrected regarding SCTP options.
Own Id: OTP-18115 Aux Id: PR-5939
The type specifications for inet:parse_* have been tightened.
Own Id: OTP-18121 Aux Id: PR-5972
Fix gen_tcp:connect/3 spec to include the inet_backend option.
Own Id: OTP-18171 Aux Id: PR-6131
Fix bug where using a binary as the format when calling logger:log(Level, Format, Args) (or any other logging function) would cause a crash or incorrect logging.
Own Id: OTP-18229 Aux Id: PR-6212

Improvements and New Features

Add rudimentary debug feature (option) for the inet-driver based sockets, such as gen_tcp and gen_udp.
Own Id: OTP-18032
Introduced the hidden and dist_listen options to net_kernel:start/2.
Also documented the -dist_listen command line argument which was erroneously documented as a kernel parameter and not as a command line argument.
Own Id: OTP-18107 Aux Id: PR-6009
Scope and group monitoring have been introduced in pg. For more information see the documentation of pg:monitor_scope(), pg:monitor(), and pg:demonitor().
Own Id: OTP-18163 Aux Id: PR-6058, PR-6275
A new function global:disconnect/0 has been introduced with which one can cleanly disconnect a node from all other nodes in a cluster of global nodes.
Own Id: OTP-18232 Aux Id: OTP-17843, PR-6264

Kernel 8.4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A call to net_kernel:setopts(new, Opts) at the same time as a connection was being set up could cause a deadlock between the net_kernel process and the process setting up the connection.
Own Id: OTP-18198 Aux Id: GH-6129, PR-6216

Kernel 8.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The DNS resolver inet_res has been fixed to ignore trailing dot difference in the request domain between the sent request and the received response, when validating a response.
Own Id: OTP-18112 Aux Id: ERIERL-811
A bug in inet_res has been fixed where a missing internal {ok,_} wrapper caused inet_res:resolve/* to return a calculated host name instead of an {ok,Msg} tuple, when resolving an IP address or a host name that is an IP address string.
Own Id: OTP-18122 Aux Id: GH-6015, PR-6020
The erlang:is_alive() BIF could return true before configured distribution service was available. This bug was introduced in OTP 25.0 ERTS version 13.0.
The erlang:monitor_node() and erlang:monitor() BIFs could erroneously fail even though configured distribution service was available. This occurred if these BIFs were called after the distribution had been started using dynamic node name assignment but before the name had been assigned.
Own Id: OTP-18124 Aux Id: OTP-17558, PR-6032
Added the missing mandatory address/0 callback in the gen_tcp_dist example.
Own Id: OTP-18136

Kernel 8.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The DNS resolver implementation has been rewritten to validate replies more thoroughly, and a bit optimized to create less garbage.
Own Id: OTP-17323
The socket option 'reuseaddr' is no longer ignored on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-17447 Aux Id: GH-4819
Fix bug where using the atoms string or report as the format when calling logger:log(Level, Format, Args) (or any other logging function) would cause a crash or incorrect logging.
Own Id: OTP-17551 Aux Id: GH-5071 PR-5075
As of OTP 25, global will by default prevent overlapping partitions due to network issues by actively disconnecting from nodes that reports that they have lost connections to other nodes. This will cause fully connected partitions to form instead of leaving the network in a state with overlapping partitions.
Prevention of overlapping partitions can be disabled using the prevent_overlapping_partitions kernel(6) parameter, making global behave like it used to do. This is, however, problematic for all applications expecting a fully connected network to be provided, such as for example mnesia, but also for global itself. A network of overlapping partitions might cause the internal state of global to become inconsistent. Such an inconsistency can remain even after such partitions have been brought together to form a fully connected network again. The effect on other applications that expects that a fully connected network is maintained may vary, but they might misbehave in very subtle hard to detect ways during such a partitioning. Since you might get hard to detect issues without this fix, you are strongly advised not to disable this fix. Also note that this fix has to be enabled on all nodes in the network in order to work properly.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17911 Aux Id: PR-5687, PR-5611, OTP-17843
Starting the helper program for name resolving; inet_gethost, has been improved to use an absolute file system path to ensure that the right program is started.
If the helper program can not be started - the system now halts, to avoid running with a silently broken name resolver.
Own Id: OTP-17958 Aux Id: OTP-17978
The type specification for inet_res:getbyname/2,3 has been corrected to reflect that it can return peculiar #hostent{} records.
Own Id: OTP-17986 Aux Id: PR-5412, PR-5803
code:module_status/1 would always report BEAM files loaded from an archive as modified, and code:modified_modules/0 would always return the name of all modules loaded from archives.
Own Id: OTP-17990 Aux Id: GH-5801
In logger fix file handler shutdown delay by using erlang timers instead of the timer module's timers.
Own Id: OTP-18001 Aux Id: GH-5780 PR-5829
Fix the meta data in log events generated by logger on failure to not contain the original log event's meta data.
Own Id: OTP-18003 Aux Id: PR-5771
Fix logger file backend to re-create the log folder if it has been deleted.
Own Id: OTP-18015 Aux Id: GH-5828 PR-5845
[socket] Encode of sockaddr has been improved.
Own Id: OTP-18020
Fix put_chars requests to the io server with incomplete unicode data to exit with no_translation error.
Own Id: OTP-18070 Aux Id: PR-5885

Improvements and New Features

The net module now works on Windows.
Own Id: OTP-16464
An Erlang installation directory is now relocatable on the file system given that the paths in the installation's RELEASES file are paths that are relative to the installations root directory. The `release_handler:create_RELEASES/4 function can generate a RELEASES file with relative paths if its RootDir parameter is set to the empty string.
Own Id: OTP-17304
The following distribution flags are now mandatory: DFLAG_BIT_BINARIES, DFLAG_EXPORT_PTR_TAG, DFLAG_MAP_TAGS, DFLAG_NEW_FLOATS, and DFLAG_FUN_TAGS. This mainly concerns libraries or application that implement the distribution protocol themselves.
Own Id: OTP-17318 Aux Id: PR-4972
Fix os:cmd to work on Android OS.
Own Id: OTP-17479 Aux Id: PR-4917
The configuration files .erlang, .erlang.cookie and .erlang.crypt can now be located in the XDG Config Home directory.
See the documentation for each file and filename:basedir/2 for more details.
Own Id: OTP-17554 Aux Id: GH-5016 PR-5408 OTP-17821
Dynamic node name improvements: erlang:is_alive/0 changed to return true for pending dynamic node name and new function net_kernel:get_state/0.
Own Id: OTP-17558 Aux Id: OTP-17538, PR-5111, GH-5402
The types for callback result types in gen_statem has bee augmented with arity 2 types where it is possible for a callback module to specify the type of the callback data, so the callback module can get type validation of it.
Own Id: OTP-17589 Aux Id: PR-4926
The tagged tuple tests and fun-calls have been optimized and are now a little bit cheaper than previously.
These optimizations become possible after making sure that all boxed terms have at least one word allocated after the arity word. This has been accomplished by letting all empty tuples refer to the same empty tuple literal which also reduces memory usage for empty tuples.
Own Id: OTP-17608
A net_ticker_spawn_options kernel configuration parameter with which one can set spawn options for the distribution channel ticker processes has been introduced.
Own Id: OTP-17617 Aux Id: PR-5069
The most, or at least the most used, rpc operations now require erpc support in order to communicate with other Erlang nodes. erpc was introduced in OTP 23. That is, rpc operations against Erlang nodes of releases prior to OTP 23 will fail.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17681 Aux Id: PR-5307
The new module peer supersedes the slave module. The slave module is now deprecated and will be removed in OTP 27.
peer contains an extended and more robust API for starting erlang nodes.
Own Id: OTP-17720 Aux Id: PR-5162
In order to make it easier for the user to manage multiple outstanding asynchronous call requests, new functionality utilizing request identifier collections have been introduced in erpc, gen_server, gen_statem, and gen_event.
Own Id: OTP-17784 Aux Id: PR-5792
Type specifications have been added to the gen_server, and the documentation has been updated to utilize this.
This surfaced a few type violations that has been corrected in global, logger_olp and rpc.
Own Id: OTP-17915 Aux Id: PR-5751, GH-2375, GH-2690
IP address validation functions is_ipv4_address/1, is_ipv6_address/1 and is_ip_address/1 have been added to the module inet in Kernel.
Own Id: OTP-17923 Aux Id: PR-5646
An API for multihomed SCTP connect has been added in the guise of gen_sctp:connectx_init/*
Own Id: OTP-17951 Aux Id: PR-5656
[socket] Add encoding of the field hatype of the type sockaddr_ll (family 'packet').
Own Id: OTP-17968 Aux Id: OTP-16464
Added support for configurable features as described in EEP-60. Features can be enabled/disabled during compilation with options (-enable-feature Feature, -disable-feature Feature and +{feature, Feature, enable|disable}) to erlc as well as with directives (-feature(Feature, enable|disable).) in the file. Similar options can be used to erl for enabling/disabling features allowed at runtime. The new maybe expression (EEP-49) is fully supported as the feature maybe_expr. The features support is documented in the reference manual.
Own Id: OTP-17988

Kernel 8.3.2.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

gen_tcp:connect with socket address and socket (inet-) backend fails because of missing callback function.
Own Id: OTP-18707 Aux Id: #7530

Kernel 8.3.2.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Spec for function net:if_names/0 incorrect
Own Id: OTP-18296 Aux Id: OTP-16464
Missing ctrl option name transation for TOS and TTL (on FreeBSD) when using gen_udp with the 'socket' inet_backend.
Own Id: OTP-18315
The tcp connect option 'bind_to_device' could not be used with inet_backend = 'socket'. 'inet' requires value type binarry() and 'socket' requires value type 'string()'.
Own Id: OTP-18357 Aux Id: #6509
Minor issue processing options when calling gen_tcp:connect with a sockaddr() and inet_backend = socket.
Own Id: OTP-18358 Aux Id: #6528

Improvements and New Features

Improve warning message format for gen_tcp_socket.
Own Id: OTP-18317

Kernel 8.3.2.2

Improvements and New Features

A new function global:disconnect/0 has been introduced with which one can cleanly disconnect a node from all other nodes in a cluster of global nodes.
Own Id: OTP-18232 Aux Id: OTP-17843, PR-6264

Kernel 8.3.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A call to net_kernel:setopts(new, Opts) at the same time as a connection was being set up could cause a deadlock between the net_kernel process and the process setting up the connection.
Own Id: OTP-18198 Aux Id: GH-6129, PR-6216

Kernel 8.3.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

inet:getopts/2 for the 'raw' option for a socket created with inet-backend 'socket' failed.
Own Id: OTP-18078 Aux Id: GH-5930
Corrected the behaviour of the shutdown function when using with the inet_backend = socket. It was not sufficiently compatible with the "old" gen_tcp.
Own Id: OTP-18080 Aux Id: GH-5930

Kernel 8.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix failed accepted connection setup after previous established connection from same node closed down silently.
Own Id: OTP-17979 Aux Id: ERIERL-780
Fixed a problem where typing Ctrl-R in the shell could hang if there were some problem with the history log file.
Own Id: OTP-17981 Aux Id: PR-5791

Kernel 8.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Handling of send_timeout for gen_tcp has been corrected so that the timeout is honored also when sending 0 bytes.
Own Id: OTP-17840
By default global does not take any actions to restore a fully connected network when connections are lost due to network issues. This is problematic for all applications expecting a fully connected network to be provided, such as for example mnesia, but also for global itself. A network of overlapping partitions might cause the internal state of global to become inconsistent. Such an inconsistency can remain even after such partitions have been brought together to form a fully connected network again. The effect on other applications that expects that a fully connected network is maintained may vary, but they might misbehave in very subtle hard to detect ways during such a partitioning.
In order to prevent such issues, we have introduced a prevent overlapping partitions fix which can be enabled using the prevent_overlapping_partitions kernel(6) parameter. When this fix has been enabled, global will actively disconnect from nodes that reports that they have lost connections to other nodes. This will cause fully connected partitions to form instead of leaving the network in a state with overlapping partitions. Note that this fix has to be enabled on all nodes in the network in order to work properly. Since this quite substantially changes the behavior, this fix is currently disabled by default. Since you might get hard to detect issues without this fix you are, however, strongly advised to enable this fix in order to avoid issues such as the ones described above. As of OTP 25 this fix will become enabled by default.
Own Id: OTP-17843 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5611
Fix bug where logger would crash when logging a report including improper lists.
Own Id: OTP-17851
Make erlang:set_cookie work for dynamic node names.
Own Id: OTP-17902 Aux Id: GH-5402, PR-5670

Improvements and New Features

Add support for using socket:sockaddr_in() and socket:sockaddr_in6() when using gen_sctp, gen_tcp and gen_udp. This will make it possible to use Link Local IPv6 addresses.
Own Id: OTP-17455 Aux Id: GH-4852
A net_tickintensity kernel parameter has been introduced. It can be used to control the amount of ticks during a net_ticktime period.
A new net_kernel:start/2 function has also been introduced in order to make it easier to add new options. The use of net_kernel:start/1 has been deprecated.
Own Id: OTP-17905 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5740
Improve documentation for the dynamic node name feature.
Own Id: OTP-17918

Kernel 8.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

socket:which_sockets( pid() ) uses wrong keyword when looking up socket owner ('ctrl' instead of 'owner').
Own Id: OTP-17716
In epmd_ntop, the #if defined(EPMD6) conditional was inverted and it was only including the IPv6-specific code when EPMD6 was undefined. This was causing IPv6 addrs to be interpreted as IPv4 addrs and generating nonsense IPv4 addresses as output.
Several places were incorrectly using 'num_sockets' instead of 'i' to index into the iserv_addr array during error logging. This would result in a read into uninitialized data in the iserv_addr array.
Thanks to John Eckersberg for providing this fix.
Own Id: OTP-17730
Minor fix of the erl_uds_dist distribution module example.
Own Id: OTP-17765 Aux Id: PR-5289
A bug has been fixed for the legacy TCP socket adaption module gen_tcp_socket where it did bind to a socket address when given a file descriptor, but should not.
Own Id: OTP-17793 Aux Id: PR-5348, OTP-17451, PR-4787, GH-4680, PR-2989, OTP-17216
Improve the error printout when open_port/2 fails because of invalid arguments.
Own Id: OTP-17805 Aux Id: PR-5406
Calling socket:monitor/1 on an already closed socket should succeed and result in an immediate DOWN message. This has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-17806
Fix the configuration option logger_metadata to work.
Own Id: OTP-17807 Aux Id: PR-5418
Fix tls and non-tls distribution to use erl_epmd:address_please to figure out if IPv4 or IPv6 addresses should be used when connecting to the remote node.
Before this fix, a dns lookup of the remote node hostname determined which IP version was to be used which meant that the hostname had to resolve to a valid ip address.
Own Id: OTP-17809 Aux Id: PR-5337 GH-5334

Improvements and New Features

Add logger:reconfigure/0.
Own Id: OTP-17375 Aux Id: PR-4663 PR-5186
Add socket function ioctl/2,3,4 for socket device control.
Own Id: OTP-17528
Add simple support for socknames/1 for gen_tcp_socket and gen_udp_socket.
Own Id: OTP-17531
The types for callback result types in gen_statem has bee augmented with arity 2 types where it is possible for a callback module to specify the type of the callback data, so the callback module can get type validation of it.
Own Id: OTP-17738 Aux Id: PR-4926, OTP-17589

Kernel 8.1.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The internal, undocumented, but used, module inet_dns has been fixed to handle mDNS high bit usage of the Class field.
Code that uses the previously obsolete, undocumented and unused record field #dns_rr.func will need to be updated since that field is now used as a boolean flag for the mDNS high Class bit. Code that uses the also undocumented record #dns_query will need to be recompiled since a boolean field #dns_query.unicast_response has been added for the mDNS high Class bit.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17734 Aux Id: GH-5327, OTP-17659
The fix for Linux's behaviour when reconnecting an UDP socket in PR-5120 released in OTP-24.1.2 has been refined to only dissolve the socket's connection before a connect if the socket is already connected, that is: only for a reconnect.
This allows code to open a socket with an ephemeral port, get the port number and connect; without the port number changing (on Linux). This turned out to have at least one valid use case (besides test cases).
Should one reconnect the socket then the port number may change, on Linux; it is a known quirk, which can be worked around by binding to a specific port number when opening the socket. If you can do without an ephemeral port, that is...
Own Id: OTP-17736 Aux Id: GH-5279, PR-5120, OTP-17559

Kernel 8.1.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The undocumented DNS encode/decode module inet_dns has been cleaned up to handle the difference between "symbolic" and "raw" records in a more consistent manner.
PR-5145/OTP-17584 introduced a change that contributed to an already existing confusion, which this correction should remedy.
Own Id: OTP-17659 Aux Id: ERIERL-702

Kernel 8.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Add more info about the socket 'type' ('socket' or 'port') for the DOWN message when monitoring sockets.
Own Id: OTP-17640

Kernel 8.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The extended error information has been corrected and improved for the following BIFs: binary_to_existing_atom/2, list_to_existing_atom/1, erlang:send_after/{3,4}, and erlang:start_timer/{3,4}.
Own Id: OTP-17449 Aux Id: GH-4900
Fixed rare bug that could cause net_kernel process to hang for ever. Have seen to happen with massive number of TLS connections while remote nodes are restarting. Bug exists since OTP-22.0.
Own Id: OTP-17476 Aux Id: GH-4931, PR-4934
Improve handling of closed sockets for inet:info/1.
Own Id: OTP-17492
This change fixes a performance problem introduced in pull-request #2675. Pull-request #2675 made so the system tried to start children of already started applications which is unnecessary. This change fixes this performance problem.
Own Id: OTP-17519
Fix code:get_doc/1 to not crash when module is located in an escript.
Own Id: OTP-17570 Aux Id: PR-5139 GH-4256 ERL-1261
Parsing of the result value in the native DNS resolver has been made more defensive against incorrect results.
Own Id: OTP-17578 Aux Id: ERIERL-683
A bug in the option handling for the legacy socket adaptor, that is; when using inet_backend = socket, has been fixed. Now socket options are set before the bind() call so options regarding, for example address reuse have the desired effect.
Own Id: OTP-17580 Aux Id: GH-5122
inet:ntoa/1 has been fixed to not accept invalid numerical addresses.
Own Id: OTP-17583 Aux Id: GH-5136
Parsing of DNS records has been improved for records of known types to not accept and present malformed ones in raw format.
Own Id: OTP-17584 Aux Id: PR-5145
The ip_mreq() type for the {ip,add_membership} and {ip,drop_membership} socket options has been corrected to have an interface field instead of, incorrectly, an address field.
Own Id: OTP-17590 Aux Id: PR-5170

Improvements and New Features

Add simple utility function to display existing sockets i the erlang shell (socket:i/0).
Own Id: OTP-17376 Aux Id: OTP-17157
gen_udp can now be configured to use the socket inet-backend (in the same way as gen_tcp).
Own Id: OTP-17410
Functions erlang:set_cookie(Cookie) and erlang:get_cookie(Node) have been added for completeness and to facilitate configuring distributed nodes with different cookies.
The documentation regarding distribution cookies has been improved to be less vague.
Own Id: OTP-17538 Aux Id: GH-5063, PR-5111
A workaround has been implemented for Linux's quirky behaviour to not adjust the source IP address when connecting a connected (reconnecing) UDP socket.
The workaround is to, on Linux, always dissolve any connection before connecting an UDP socket.
Own Id: OTP-17559 Aux Id: GH-5092, PR-5120
Documented our recommendation against opening NFS-mounted files, FIFOs, devices, and similar using file:open/2.
Own Id: OTP-17576 Aux Id: ERIERL-685

Kernel 8.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

For gen_tcp:connect/3,4 it is possible to specify a specific source port, which should be enough to bind the socket to an address with that port before connecting.
Unfortunately that feature was lost in OTP-17216 that made it mandatory to specify the source address to get an address binding, and ignored a specified source port if no source address was specified.
That bug has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-17536 Aux Id: OTP-17216, ERIERL-677

Kernel 8.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a race condition in Global.
Own Id: OTP-16033 Aux Id: ERIERL-329, ERL-1414, GH-4448, ERL-885, GH-3923
After a node restart with init:restart/0,1, the module socket was not usable because supporting tables had been cleared and not re-initialized. This has now been fixed.
Handling of the "." domain as a search domain was incorrect and caused a crash in the DNS resolver inet_res, which has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-17439 Aux Id: GH-4827, PR-4888, GH-4838
Handling of combinations of the fd option and binding to an address has been corrected, especially for the local address family.
Own Id: OTP-17451 Aux Id: OTP-17374
Bug fixes and code cleanup for the new socket implementation, such as:
Assertions on the result of demonitoring has been added in the NIF code, where appropriate.
Internal state handling for socket close in the NIF code has been reviewed.
Looping over close() for EINTR in the NIF code has been removed, since it is strongly discouraged on Linux and Posix is not clear about if it is allowed.
The inet_backend temporary socket option for legacy gen_tcp sockets has been documented.
The return value from net:getaddrinfo/2 has been corrected: the protocol field is now an atom/0, instead of, incorrectly, list(atom()). The documentation has also been corrected about this return type.
Deferred close of a socket:sendfile/* file was broken and has been corrected.
Some debug code, not enabled by default, in the socket NIF has been corrected to not accidentally core dump for debug printouts of more or less innocent events.
Own Id: OTP-17452

Kernel 8.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug has been fixed for the internal inet_res resolver cache that handled a resolver configuration file status timer incorrectly and caused performance problems due to many unnecessary file system accesses.
Own Id: OTP-14700 Aux Id: PR-2848
Change the value of the tag head returned by disk_log:info/1 from {ok, Head} to just Head.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16809 Aux Id: ERL-1313
Two options have been added to erl_call. The -fetch_stdout option fetches stdout data resulting from the code invoked by erl_call. The -fetch_stdout option disables printing of the result term. In order to implement the first of these two options a new function called ei_xrpc_from has been added to erl_interface. For details see the erl_call documentation and erl_interface documentation.
Own Id: OTP-17132
Missing runtime dependencies has been added to this application.
Own Id: OTP-17243 Aux Id: PR-4557
inet:get_rc/0 has been corrected to return host entries as separate entries instead of (incorrectly) in a list within the list. This bug was introduced by OTP-16487 in OTP-23.0-rc1.
Own Id: OTP-17262 Aux Id: GH-4588, PR-4604, OTP-16487
The type gen_tcp:option_name() had a duplicate pktoptions value.
Own Id: OTP-17277
Fixed removal of empty groups from internal state in pg.
Own Id: OTP-17286 Aux Id: PR-4619
erl -remsh now prints an error message when it fails to connect to the remote node.
Own Id: OTP-17287 Aux Id: PR-4581
Fix bugs related to corrupt shell history files.
Error messages printed by shell history are now logged as logger error reports instead of written to standard error.
Own Id: OTP-17288 Aux Id: PR-4581
A logger warning is now issues when too many arguments are given to -name or -sname. Example: erl -name a b.
Own Id: OTP-17315 Aux Id: GH-4626
The cache used by inet_res now, again, can handle multiple IP addresses per domain name, and thus fixes a bug introduced in PR-3041 (OTP-13126) and PR-2891 (OTP-14485).
Own Id: OTP-17344 Aux Id: PR-4633, GH-4631, OTP-14485, OTP-12136
Sockets created with socket:accept not counted (socket:info/0).
Own Id: OTP-17372
The {fd, Fd} option to gen_tcp:listen/2 did not work for inet_backend socket, which has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-17374 Aux Id: PR-4787, GH-4680, PR-2989, OTP-17216

Improvements and New Features

The cache used by the DNS resolver inet_res has been improved to use ETS lookups instead of server calls. This is a considerable speed improvement for cache hits.
Own Id: OTP-13126 Aux Id: PR-3041
The cache ETS table type for the internal DNS resolver inet_res has changed type (internally) to get better speed and atomicity.
Own Id: OTP-14485 Aux Id: PR-2891
The experimental socket module can now use any protocol (by name) the OS supports. Suggested in PR-2641, implemented in PR-2670.
Own Id: OTP-14601 Aux Id: PR-2641, PR-2670, OTP-16749
The DNS resolver inet_res has been updated to support CAA (RFC 6844) and URI (RFC 7553) records.
Own Id: OTP-16517 Aux Id: PR-2827
A compatibility adaptor for gen_tcp to use the new socket API has been implemented (gen_tcp_socket). Used when setting the kernel application variable inet_backend = socket.
Own Id: OTP-16611 Aux Id: OTP-16749
Extended error information for failing BIF calls as proposed in EEP 54 has been implemented.
When a BIF call from the Erlang shell fails, more information about which argument or arguments that were in error will be printed. The same extended error information will by proc_lib, common_test, and qlc when BIF calls fail.
For applications that wish to provide the same extended error information, there are new functions erl_error:format_exception/3 and erl_error:format_exception/4.
There is a new error/3 BIF that allows applications or libraries to provide extended error information in the same way for their own exceptions.
Own Id: OTP-16686
The file server can now be bypassed in file:delete/1,2 with the raw option.
Own Id: OTP-16698 Aux Id: PR-2634
An example implementation of Erlang distribution over UDS using distribution processes has been introduced.
Thanks to Jérôme de Bretagne
Own Id: OTP-16703 Aux Id: PR-2620
The process alias feature as outlined by EEP 53 has been introduced. It is introduced in order to provide a lightweight mechanism that can prevent late replies after timeout or connection loss. For more information, see EEP 53 and the documentation of the new alias/1 BIF and the new options to the monitor/3 BIF.
The call operation in the framework used by gen_server, gen_statem, and gen_event has been updated to utilize alias in order to prevent late responses. The gen_statem behavior still use a proxy process in the distributed case, since it has always prevented late replies and aliases won't work against pre OTP 24 nodes. The proxy process can be removed in OTP 26.
The alias feature also made it possible to introduce new functions similar to the erpc:receive_response() function in the gen behaviors, so the new functions gen_server:receive_response(), gen_statem:receive_response(), gen_event:receive_response() have also been introduced.
Own Id: OTP-16718 Aux Id: PR-2735
The experimental new socket API has been further developed. Some backwards incompatible changes with respect to OTP 23 have been made.
The control message format has been changed so a decoded value is now in the 'value' field instead of in the 'data' field. The 'data' field now always contains binary data.
Some type names have been changed regarding message headers and control message headers.
socket:bind/2 now returns plain ok instead of {ok, Port} which was only relevant for the inet and inet6 address families and often not interesting. To find out which port was chosen use socket:sockname/1.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16749 Aux Id: OTP-14601
New function os:env/0 returns all OS environment variables as a list of 2-tuples.
Own Id: OTP-16793 Aux Id: ERL-1332, PR-2740
Remove the support for distributed disk logs. The new function disk_log:all/0 is to be used instead of disk_log:accessible_logs/0. The function disk_log:close/1 is to be used instead of disk_log:lclose/1,2.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16811
Expand the spec for erl_epmd:listen_port_please/2 to mirror erl_epmd:port_please/2.
Own Id: OTP-16947 Aux Id: PR-2781
A new erl parameter for specifying a file descriptor with configuration data has been added. This makes it possible to pass the parameter "-configfd FD" when executing the erl command. When this option is given, the system will try to read and parse configuration parameters from the file descriptor.
Own Id: OTP-16952
The experimental HiPE application has been removed, together with all related functionality in other applications.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16963
The pg2 module has been removed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16968
Accept references up to a size of 160-bits from remote nodes. This is the first step in an upgrade path toward using references up to 160-bits in a future OTP release.
Own Id: OTP-17005 Aux Id: OTP-16718
Allow utf-8 binaries as parts of logger_formatter template.
Own Id: OTP-17015
Let disk_log:open/1 change the size if a wrap log is opened for the first time, that is, the disk log process does not exist, and the value of option size does not match the current size of the disk log.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17062 Aux Id: ERL-1418, GH-4469, ERIERL-537
Allow the shell history of an erlang node to be fetched and stores using a custom callback module. See shell_history configuration parameter in the kernel documentation for more details.
Own Id: OTP-17103 Aux Id: PR-2949
The simple logger (used to log events that happen before kernel has been started) has been improved to print prettier error messages.
Own Id: OTP-17106 Aux Id: PR-2885
socket:sendfile/2,3,4,5 has been implemented, for platforms that support the underlying socket library call.
Own Id: OTP-17154 Aux Id: OTP-16749
Add socket monitor(s) for all types sockets.
Own Id: OTP-17155
Fix various issues with the gen_tcp_socket. Including documenting some incompatibilities.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17156
inet:i/0 now also shows existing gen_tcp compatibility sockets (based on 'socket').
Own Id: OTP-17157
Added support in logger for setting primary metadata. The primary metadata is passed as a base metadata to all log events in the system. See Metadata in the Logger chapter of the Kernel User's Guide for more details.
Own Id: OTP-17181 Aux Id: PR-2457
Recognize new key 'optional_applications' in application resource files.
Own Id: OTP-17189 Aux Id: PR-2675
The Fun's passed to logger:log/2,3,4 can now return metadata that will only be fetched when needed. See logger:log/2,3,4 for more details.
Own Id: OTP-17198 Aux Id: PR-2721
erpc:multicall() has been rewritten to be able to utilize the newly introduced and improved selective receive optimization.
Own Id: OTP-17201 Aux Id: PR-4534
Add utility fiunction inet:info/1 to provide miscellaneous info about a socket.
Own Id: OTP-17203 Aux Id: OTP-17156
The behaviour for gen_tcp:connect/3,4 has been changed to not per default bind to an address, which allows the network stack to delay the address and port selection to when the remote address is known. This allows better port re-use, and thus enables far more outgoing connections, since the ephemeral port range no longer has to be a hard limit.
There is a theoretical possibility that this behaviour change can affect the set of possible error values, or have other small implications on some platforms.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17216 Aux Id: PR-2989
An option {nxdomain_reply, boolean()} has been implemented in the DNS resolver inet_res. It is useful since an nxdomain error from a name server does contain the SOA record if the domain exists at all. This record is useful to determine a TTL for negative caching of the failed entry.
Own Id: OTP-17266 Aux Id: PR-4564
Optimized lookup of local processes part of groups in pg.
Own Id: OTP-17284 Aux Id: PR-4615
The return values from module socket functions send(), sendto(), sendmsg(), sendfile() and recv() has been changed to return a tuple tagged with select when a SelectInfo was returned, and not sometimes tagged with ok.
This is a backwards incompatible change that improves usability for code using asynchronous operations.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17355 Aux Id: OTP-17154
Fixed warnings in code matching on underscore prefixed variables.
Own Id: OTP-17385 Aux Id: OTP-17123

Kernel 7.3.1.7

Improvements and New Features

A new function global:disconnect/0 has been introduced with which one can cleanly disconnect a node from all other nodes in a cluster of global nodes.
Own Id: OTP-18232 Aux Id: OTP-17843, PR-6264

Kernel 7.3.1.6

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A call to net_kernel:setopts(new, Opts) at the same time as a connection was being set up could cause a deadlock between the net_kernel process and the process setting up the connection.
Own Id: OTP-18198 Aux Id: GH-6129, PR-6216

Kernel 7.3.1.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

By default global does not take any actions to restore a fully connected network when connections are lost due to network issues. This is problematic for all applications expecting a fully connected network to be provided, such as for example mnesia, but also for global itself. A network of overlapping partitions might cause the internal state of global to become inconsistent. Such an inconsistency can remain even after such partitions have been brought together to form a fully connected network again. The effect on other applications that expects that a fully connected network is maintained may vary, but they might misbehave in very subtle hard to detect ways during such a partitioning.
In order to prevent such issues, we have introduced a prevent overlapping partitions fix which can be enabled using the prevent_overlapping_partitions kernel(6) parameter. When this fix has been enabled, global will actively disconnect from nodes that reports that they have lost connections to other nodes. This will cause fully connected partitions to form instead of leaving the network in a state with overlapping partitions. Note that this fix has to be enabled on all nodes in the network in order to work properly. Since this quite substantially changes the behavior, this fix is currently disabled by default. Since you might get hard to detect issues without this fix you are, however, strongly advised to enable this fix in order to avoid issues such as the ones described above. As of OTP 25 this fix will become enabled by default.
Own Id: OTP-17843 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5611
Fix failed accepted connection setup after previous established connection from same node closed down silently.
Own Id: OTP-17979 Aux Id: ERIERL-780

Improvements and New Features

A net_tickintensity kernel parameter has been introduced. It can be used to control the amount of ticks during a net_ticktime period.
A new net_kernel:start/2 function has also been introduced in order to make it easier to add new options. The use of net_kernel:start/1 has been deprecated.
Own Id: OTP-17905 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5740

Kernel 7.3.1.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Parsing of the result value in the native DNS resolver has been made more defensive against incorrect results.
Own Id: OTP-17578 Aux Id: ERIERL-683

Kernel 7.3.1.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix code:get_doc/1 to not crash when module is located in an escript.
Own Id: OTP-17570 Aux Id: PR-5139 GH-4256 ERL-1261

Kernel 7.3.1.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Handling of the "." domain as a search domain was incorrect and caused a crash in the DNS resolver inet_res, which has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-17473 Aux Id: GH-4838, OTP-17439
Fixed rare bug that could cause net_kernel process to hang for ever. Have seen to happen with massive number of TLS connections while remote nodes are restarting. Bug exists since OTP-22.0.
Own Id: OTP-17476 Aux Id: GH-4931, PR-4934

Kernel 7.3.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a race condition in Global.
Own Id: OTP-16033 Aux Id: ERIERL-329, ERL-1414, GH-4448, ERL-885, GH-3923

Kernel 7.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug in the Erlang DNS resolver has been fixed, where it could be made to bring down the kernel supervisor and thereby the whole node, when getting an incorrect (IN A reply to an IN CNAME query) reply from the DNS server and used the reply record's value without verifying its type.
Own Id: OTP-17361

Kernel 7.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The range check for compression pointers in DNS encoding was faulty, which caused incorrect label compression encoding for very large DNS messages; larger than about 16 kBytes, such as AXFR responses. This more than 11 year old bug has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-13641 Aux Id: PR-2959
Fix of internal links in the erpc documentation.
Own Id: OTP-17202 Aux Id: PR-4516
Fix bug where complex seq_trace tokens (that is lists, tuples, maps etc) could becomes corrupted by the GC. The bug was introduced in OTP-21.
Own Id: OTP-17209 Aux Id: PR-3039
When running Xref in the modules mode, the Debugger application would show up as a dependency for the Kernel applications.
Own Id: OTP-17223 Aux Id: GH-4546, PR-4554

Improvements and New Features

erl_epmd (the epmd client) will now try to reconnect to the local EPMD if the connection is broken.
Own Id: OTP-17178 Aux Id: PR-3003

Kernel 7.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When using the DNS resolver option servfail_retry_timeout it did not honour the overall call time-out in e.g inet_res:getbyname/3. This misbehaviour has now been fixed. Also, the servfail_retry_timeout behaviour has been improved to only be enforced for servers that gives a servfail answer.
Own Id: OTP-12960 Aux Id: ERIERL-598, PR-4509

Kernel 7.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The apply call's in logger.hrl are now called with erlang prefix to avoid clashed with local apply/3 functions.
Own Id: OTP-16976 Aux Id: PR-2807
Fix memory leak in pg.
Own Id: OTP-17034 Aux Id: PR-2866
Fix crash in logger_proxy due to stray gen_server:call replies not being handled. The stray replies come when logger is under heavy load and the flow control mechanism is reaching its limit.
Own Id: OTP-17038
Fixed a bug in erl_epmd:names() that caused it to return the illegal return value noport instead of {error, Reason} where Reason is the actual error reason. This bug also propagated to net_adm:names().
This bug was introduced in kernel version 7.1 (OTP 23.1).
Own Id: OTP-17054 Aux Id: ERL-1424

Improvements and New Features

Add export of some resolver documented types.
Own Id: OTP-16954 Aux Id: ERIERL-544
Add configurable retry timeout for resolver lookups.
Own Id: OTP-16956 Aux Id: ERIERL-547
gen_server:multi_call() has been optimized in the special case of only calling the local node with timeout set to infinity.
Own Id: OTP-17058 Aux Id: PR-2887

Kernel 7.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A fallback has been implemented for file:sendfile when using inet_backend socket
Own Id: OTP-15187 Aux Id: ERL-1293
Make default TCP distribution honour option backlog in inet_dist_listen_options.
Own Id: OTP-16694 Aux Id: PR-2625
Raw option handling for the experimental gen_tcp_socket backend was broken so that all raw options were ignored by for example gen_tcp:listen/2, a bug that now has been fixed. Reported by Jan Uhlig.
Own Id: OTP-16743 Aux Id: ERL-1287
Accept fails with inet-backend socket.
Own Id: OTP-16748 Aux Id: ERL-1284
Fixed various minor errors in the socket backend of gen_tcp.
Own Id: OTP-16754
Correct disk_log:truncate/1 to count the header. Also correct the documentation to state that disk_log:truncate/1 can be used with external disk logs.
Own Id: OTP-16768 Aux Id: ERL-1312
Fix erl_epmd:port_please/2,3 type specs to include all possible error values.
Own Id: OTP-16783
Fix erl -erl_epmd_port to work properly. Before this fix it did not work at all.
Own Id: OTP-16785
Fix typespec for internal function erlang:seq_trace_info/1 to allow term/0 as returned label. This in turn fixes so that calls to seq_trace:get_token/1 can be correctly analyzer by dialyzer.
Own Id: OTP-16823 Aux Id: PR-2722
Fix erroneous double registration of processes in pg when distribution is dynamically started.
Own Id: OTP-16832 Aux Id: PR-2738

Improvements and New Features

Make (use of) the socket registry optional (still enabled by default). Its now possible to build OTP with the socket registry turned off, turn it off by setting an environment variable and controlling in runtime (via function calls and arguments when creating sockets).
Own Id: OTP-16763
erl -remsh nodename no longer requires the hostname to be given when used together with dynamic nodenames.
Own Id: OTP-16784

Kernel 7.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix race condition during shutdown when shell_history is enabled. The race condition would trigger crashes in disk_log.
Own Id: OTP-16008 Aux Id: PR-2302
Fix the Erlang distribution to handle the scenario when a node connects that can handle message fragmentation but can not handle the atom cache. This bug only affects users that have implemented a custom distribution carrier. It has been present since OTP-21.
The DFLAG_FRAGMENT distribution flag was added to the set of flags that can be rejected by a distribution implementation.
Own Id: OTP-16284
Fix bug where a binary was not allowed to be the format string in calls to logger:log.
Own Id: OTP-16395 Aux Id: PR-2444
Fix bug where logger would end up in an infinite loop when trying to log the crash of a handler or formatter.
Own Id: OTP-16489 Aux Id: ERL-1134
code:lib_dir/1 has been fixed to also return the lib dir for erts.
This is been marked as an incompatibility for any application that depended on {error,bad_name} to be returned for erts.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16502
The application stop/1 callback was not called if the application master of the application terminated.
Own Id: OTP-16504 Aux Id: PR-2328
Fix bug in application:loaded_applications/0 that could cause it to fail with badarg if for example a concurrent upgrade/downgrade is running.
Own Id: OTP-16627 Aux Id: PR-2601

Improvements and New Features

A new module erpc has been introduced in the kernel application. The erpc module implements an enhanced subset of the operations provided by the rpc module. Enhanced in the sense that it makes it possible to distinguish between returned value, raised exceptions, and other errors. erpc also has better performance and scalability than the original rpc implementation. This by utilizing the newly introduced spawn_request() BIF. Also the rpc module benefits from these improvements by utilizing erpc when it is possible.
This change has been marked as a potential incompatibility since rpc:block_call() now only is guaranteed to block other block_call() operations. The documentation previously claimed that it would block all rpc operations. This has however never been the case. It previously did not block node-local block_call() operations.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13450 Aux Id: OTP-15251
A client node can receive its node name dynamically from the node that it first connects to. This featured can by used by
- starting with erl -sname undefined
- erl_interface functions ei_connect_init and friends
- erl_call -R
Own Id: OTP-13812
Improved the printout of single line logger events for most of the OTP behaviours in STDLIB and Kernel. This includes proc_lib, gen_server, gen_event, gen_statem, gen_fsm, supervisor, supervisor_bridge and application.
Improved the chars_limit and depth handling in proc_lib and when formatting of exceptions.
Own Id: OTP-15299
Remove usage and documentation of old requests of the I/O-protocol.
Own Id: OTP-15695
Directories can now be opened by file:open/2 when passing the directory option.
Own Id: OTP-15835 Aux Id: PR-2212
The check of whether to log or not based on the log level in logger has been optimized by using persistent_term to store the log level.
Own Id: OTP-15948 Aux Id: PR-2356
file:read_file_info/2 can now be used on opened files and directories.
Own Id: OTP-15956 Aux Id: PR-2231
The -config option to erl now can take multiple config files without repeating the -config option. Example:
erl -config sys local
Own Id: OTP-16148 Aux Id: PR-2373
Improved node connection setup handshake protocol. Made possible to agree on protocol version without dependence on epmd or other prior knowledge of peer node version. Also added exchange of node incarnation ("creation") values and expanded the distribution capability flag field from 32 to 64 bits.
Own Id: OTP-16229
The possibility to run Erlang distribution without relying on EPMD has been extended. To achieve this a couple of new options to the inet distribution has been added.
- -dist_listen false - Setup the distribution channel, but do not listen for incoming connection. This is useful when you want to use the current node to interact with another node on the same machine without it joining the entire cluster.
- -erl_epmd_port Port - Configure a default port that the built-in EPMD client should return. This allows the local node to know the port to connect to for any other node in the cluster.
The erl_epmd callback API has also been extended to allow returning -1 as the creation which means that a random creation will be created by the node.
In addition a new callback function called listen_port_please has been added that allows the callback to return which listen port the distribution should use. This can be used instead of inet_dist_listen_min/max if the listen port is to be fetched from an external service.
Own Id: OTP-16250
A first EXPERIMENTAL module that is a socket backend to gen_tcp and inet has been implemented. Others will follow. Feedback will be appreciated.
Own Id: OTP-16260 Aux Id: OTP-15403
The new experimental socket module has been moved to the Kernel application.
Own Id: OTP-16312
Replace usage of deprecated function in the group module.
Own Id: OTP-16345
Minor updates due to the new spawn improvements made.
Own Id: OTP-16368 Aux Id: OTP-15251
Update of sequential tracing to also support other information transfers than message passing.
Own Id: OTP-16370 Aux Id: OTP-15251, OTP-15232
code:module_status/1 now accepts a list of modules. code:module_status/0, which returns the statuses for all loaded modules, has been added.
Own Id: OTP-16402
filelib:wildcard/1,2 is now twice as fast when a double star (**) is part of the pattern.
Own Id: OTP-16419
A new implementation of distributed named process groups has been introduced. It is available in the pg module.
Note that this pg module only has the name in common with the experimental pg module that was present in stdlib up until OTP 17.
Thanks to Maxim Fedorov for the implementation.
Own Id: OTP-16453 Aux Id: PR-2524
The pg2 module has been deprecated. It has also been scheduled for removal in OTP 24.
You are advised to replace the usage of pg2 with the newly introduced pg module. pg has a similar API, but with a more scalable implementation.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16455
Refactored the internal handling of deprecated and removed functions.
Own Id: OTP-16469
The internal hosts file resolver cache inet_hosts has been rewritten to behave better when the hosts file changes. For example the cache is updated per entry instead of cleared and reloaded so lookups do not temporarily fail during reloading, and; when multiple processes simultaneously request reload these are now folded into one instead of all done in sequence. Reported and first solution suggestion by Maxim Fedorov.
Own Id: OTP-16487 Aux Id: PR-2516
Add code:all_available/0 that can be used to get all available modules.
Own Id: OTP-16494
As of OTP 23, the distributed disk_log feature has been deprecated. It has also been scheduled for removal in OTP 24.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16495
Add the function code:fetch_docs/1 for fetching embedded documentation for aa Erlang module.
Own Id: OTP-16499
Improve configure for the net nif, which should increase portability.
Own Id: OTP-16530 Aux Id: OTP-16464
socket: Socket counters and socket global counters are now represented as maps (instead of property lists).
Own Id: OTP-16535
The experimental socket module has gotten restrictions removed so now the 'seqpacket' socket type should work for any communication domain (protocol family) where the OS supports it, typically the Unix Domain.
Own Id: OTP-16550 Aux Id: ERIERL-476
Allow using custom IO devices in logger_std_h.
Own Id: OTP-16563 Aux Id: PR-2523
Added file:del_dir_r/1 which deletes a directory together with all of its contents, similar to rm -rf on Unix systems.
Own Id: OTP-16570 Aux Id: PR-2565
socket: By default the socket options rcvtimeo and sndtimeo are now disabled. To enable these, OTP now has to be built with the configure option --enable-esock-rcvsndtimeo
Own Id: OTP-16620
The experimental gen_tcp compatibility code utilizing the socket module could loose buffered data when receiving a specified number of bytes. This bug has been fixed. Reported by Maksim Lapshin on bugs.erlang.org ERL-1234
Own Id: OTP-16632 Aux Id: ERL-1234

Kernel 6.5.2.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

By default global does not take any actions to restore a fully connected network when connections are lost due to network issues. This is problematic for all applications expecting a fully connected network to be provided, such as for example mnesia, but also for global itself. A network of overlapping partitions might cause the internal state of global to become inconsistent. Such an inconsistency can remain even after such partitions have been brought together to form a fully connected network again. The effect on other applications that expects that a fully connected network is maintained may vary, but they might misbehave in very subtle hard to detect ways during such a partitioning.
In order to prevent such issues, we have introduced a prevent overlapping partitions fix which can be enabled using the prevent_overlapping_partitions kernel(6) parameter. When this fix has been enabled, global will actively disconnect from nodes that reports that they have lost connections to other nodes. This will cause fully connected partitions to form instead of leaving the network in a state with overlapping partitions. Note that this fix has to be enabled on all nodes in the network in order to work properly. Since this quite substantially changes the behavior, this fix is currently disabled by default. Since you might get hard to detect issues without this fix you are, however, strongly advised to enable this fix in order to avoid issues such as the ones described above. As of OTP 25 this fix will become enabled by default.
Own Id: OTP-17843 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5611

Improvements and New Features

A net_tickintensity kernel parameter has been introduced. It can be used to control the amount of ticks during a net_ticktime period.
A new net_kernel:start/2 function has also been introduced in order to make it easier to add new options. The use of net_kernel:start/1 has been deprecated.
Own Id: OTP-17905 Aux Id: ERIERL-732, PR-5740

Kernel 6.5.2.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed rare bug that could cause net_kernel process to hang for ever. Have seen to happen with massive number of TLS connections while remote nodes are restarting. Bug exists since OTP-22.0.
Own Id: OTP-17476 Aux Id: GH-4931, PR-4934

Kernel 6.5.2.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a race condition in Global.
Own Id: OTP-16033 Aux Id: ERIERL-329, ERL-1414, GH-4448, ERL-885, GH-3923

Kernel 6.5.2.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When running Xref in the modules mode, the Debugger application would show up as a dependency for the Kernel applications.
Own Id: OTP-17223 Aux Id: GH-4546, PR-4554

Kernel 6.5.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix bug in application:loaded_applications/0 that could cause it to fail with badarg if for example a concurrent upgrade/downgrade is running.
Own Id: OTP-16627 Aux Id: PR-2601

Kernel 6.5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The DNS resolver `inet_res` has been fixed to return the last intermediate error when subsequent requests times out.
Own Id: OTP-16414 Aux Id: ERIERL-452
The prim_net nif (net/kernel) made use of an undefined atom, notsup. This has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-16440
Fix a crash when attempting to log faults when loading files during early boot.
Own Id: OTP-16491
Fix crash in logger when logging to a remote node during boot.
Own Id: OTP-16493 Aux Id: ERIERL-459

Improvements and New Features

Improved net_kernel debug functionality.
Own Id: OTP-16458 Aux Id: PR-2525

Kernel 6.5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The 'socket state' info provided by the inet info function has been improved
Own Id: OTP-16043 Aux Id: ERL-1036
Fix bug where logger would crash when starting when a very large log file needed to be rotated and compressed.
Own Id: OTP-16145 Aux Id: ERL-1034
Fixed a bug causing actual nodedown reason reported by net_kernel:monitor_nodes(true, [nodedown_reason]) to be lost and replaced by the reason killed.
Own Id: OTP-16216
The documentation for rpc:call/4,5/ has been updated to describe what happens when the called function throws or return an 'EXIT' tuple.
Own Id: OTP-16279 Aux Id: ERL-1066

Kernel 6.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The type specification for gen_sctp:connect/4,5 has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15344 Aux Id: ERL-947
Extra -mode flags given to erl are ignored with a warning.
Own Id: OTP-15852
Fix type spec for seq_trace:set_token/2.
Own Id: OTP-15858 Aux Id: ERL-700
logger:compare_levels/2 would fail with a badarg exception if given the values all or none as any of the parameters. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15942 Aux Id: PR-2301
Fix bug where the log file in logger_std_h would not be closed when the inode of the file changed. This would in turn cause a file descriptor leak when tools like logrotate are used.
Own Id: OTP-15997 Aux Id: PR-2331
Fix a race condition in the debugging function net_kernel:nodes_info/0.
Own Id: OTP-16022
Fix race condition when closing a file opened in compressed or delayed_write mode.
Own Id: OTP-16023

Improvements and New Features

The possibility to send ancillary data, in particular the TOS field, has been added to gen_udp:send/4,5.
Own Id: OTP-15747 Aux Id: ERIERL-294
If the log file was given with relative path, the standard logger handler (logger_std_h) would store the file name with relative path. If the current directory of the node was later changed, a new file would be created relative the new current directory, potentially failing with an enoent if the new directory did not exist. This is now corrected and logger_std_h always stores the log file name as an absolute path, calculated from the current directory at the time of the handler startup.
Own Id: OTP-15850
Support local sockets with inet:i/0.
Own Id: OTP-15935 Aux Id: PR-2299

Kernel 6.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

user/user_drv could respond to io requests before they had been processed, which could cause data to be dropped if the emulator was halted soon after a call to io:format/2, such as in an escript.
Own Id: OTP-15805

Kernel 6.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix so that when multiple -sname or -name are given to erl the first one is chosen. Before this fix distribution was not started at all when multiple name options were given.
Own Id: OTP-15786 Aux Id: ERL-918
Fix inet_res configuration pointing to non-existing files to work again. This was broken in KERNEL-6.3 (OTP-21.3).
Own Id: OTP-15806

Improvements and New Features

A simple socket API is provided through the socket module. This is a low level API that does not replace gen_[tcp|udp|sctp]. It is intended to eventually replace the inet driver, but not the high level gen-modules (gen_tcp, gen_udp and gen_sctp). It also provides a basic API that facilitates the implementation of other protocols, that is TCP, UDP and SCTP.
Known issues are; No support for the Windows OS (currently).
Own Id: OTP-14831
Improved the documentation for the linger option.
Own Id: OTP-15491 Aux Id: PR-2019
Global no longer tries more than once when connecting to other nodes.
Own Id: OTP-15607 Aux Id: ERIERL-280
The dist messages EXIT, EXIT2 and MONITOR_DOWN have been updated with new versions that send the reason term as part of the payload of the message instead of as part of the control message.
The old versions are still present and can be used when communicating with nodes that don't support the new versions.
Own Id: OTP-15611
Kernel configuration parameter start_distribution = boolean() is added. If set to false, the system is started with all distribution functionality disabled. Defaults to true.
Own Id: OTP-15668 Aux Id: PR-2088
In OTP-21.3, a warning was introduced for duplicated applications/keys in configuration. This warning would be displayed both when the configuration was given as a file on system start, and during runtime via application:set_env/1,2.
The warning is now changed to a badarg exception in application:set_env/1,2. If the faulty configuration is given in a configuration file on system start, the startup will fail.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-15692 Aux Id: PR-2170

Kernel 6.3.1.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix bug where the log file in logger_std_h would not be closed when the inode of the file changed. This would in turn cause a file descriptor leak when tools like logrotate are used.
Own Id: OTP-15997 Aux Id: PR-2331

Kernel 6.3.1.2

Improvements and New Features

The possibility to send ancillary data, in particular the TOS field, has been added to gen_udp:send/4,5.
Own Id: OTP-15747 Aux Id: ERIERL-294

Kernel 6.3.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix type spec for seq_trace:set_token/2.
Own Id: OTP-15858 Aux Id: ERL-700

Kernel 6.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a performance regression when reading files opened with the compressed flag.
Own Id: OTP-15706 Aux Id: ERIERL-336

Kernel 6.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

If for example the /etc/hosts did not come into existence until after the kernel application had started, its content was never read. This bug has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-14702 Aux Id: PR-2066
Fix bug where doing seq_trace:reset_trace() while another process was doing a garbage collection could cause the run-time system to segfault.
Own Id: OTP-15490
Fix erl_epmd:port_please spec to include atom/0 and string/0.
Own Id: OTP-15557 Aux Id: PR-2117
The Logger handler logger_std_h now keeps track of the inode of its log file in order to re-open the file if the inode changes. This may happen, for instance, if the log file is opened and saved by an editor.
Own Id: OTP-15578 Aux Id: ERL-850
When user specific file modes are given to the logger handler logger_std_h, they were earlier accepted without any control. This is now changes, so Logger will adjust the file modes as follows:
- If raw is not found in the list, it is added.
- If none of write, append or exclusive are found in the list, append is added.
- If none of delayed_write or {delayed_write,Size,Delay} are found in the list, delayed_write is added.
Own Id: OTP-15602

Improvements and New Features

The standard logger handler, logger_std_h, now has a new internal feature for log rotation. The rotation scheme is as follows:
The log file to which the handler currently writes always has the same name, i.e. the name which is configured for the handler. The archived files have the same name, but with extension ".N", where N is an integer. The newest archive has extension ".0", and the oldest archive has the highest number.
The size at which the log file is rotated, and the number of archive files that are kept, is specified with the handler specific configuration parameters max_no_bytes and max_no_files respectively.
Archives can be compressed, in which case they get a ".gz" file extension after the integer. Compression is specified with the handler specific configuration parameter compress_on_rotate.
Own Id: OTP-15479
The new functions logger:i/0 and logger:i/1 are added. These provide the same information as logger:get_config/0 and other logger:get_*_config functions, but the information is more logically sorted and more readable.
Own Id: OTP-15600
Logger is now protected against overload due to massive amounts of log events from the emulator or from remote nodes.
Own Id: OTP-15601
Logger now uses os:system_time/1 instead of erlang:system_time/1 to generate log event timestamps.
Own Id: OTP-15625
Add functions application:set_env/1,2 and application:set_env/2. These take a list of application configuration parameters, and the behaviour is equivalent to calling application:set_env/4 individually for each application/key combination, except it is more efficient.
set_env/1,2 warns about duplicated applications or keys. The warning is also emitted during boot, if applications or keys are duplicated within one configuration file, e.g. sys.config.
Own Id: OTP-15642 Aux Id: PR-2164
Handler specific configuration parameters for the standard handler logger_std_h are changed to be more intuitive and more similar to the disk_log handler.
Earlier there was only one parameter, type, which could have the values standard_io, standard_error, {file,FileName} or {file,FileName,Modes}.
This is now changed, so the following parameters are allowed:
type = standard_io | standard_error | file
file = file:filename()
modes = [file:mode()]
All parameters are optional. type defaults to standard_io, unless a file name is given, in which case it defaults to file. If type is set to file, the file name defaults to the same as the handler id.
The potential incompatibility is that logger:get_config/0 and logger:get_handler_config/1 now returns the new parameters, even if the configuration was set with the old variant, e.g. #{type=>{file,FileName}}.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-15662
The new configuration parameter file_check is added to the Logger handler logger_std_h. This parameter specifies how long (in milliseconds) the handler may wait before checking if the log file still exists and the inode is the same as when it was opened.
The default value is 0, which means that this check is done prior to each write operation. Setting a higher number may improve performance, but adds the risk of losing log events.
Own Id: OTP-15663

Kernel 6.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Setting the recbuf size of an inet socket the buffer is also automatically increased. Fix a bug where the auto adjustment of inet buffer size would be triggered even if an explicit inet buffer size had already been set.
Own Id: OTP-15651 Aux Id: ERIERL-304

Kernel 6.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A new function, logger:update_handler_config/3 is added, and the handler callback changing_config now has a new argument, SetOrUpdate, which indicates if the configuration change comes from set_handler_config/2,3 or update_handler_config/2,3.
This allows the handler to consistently merge the new configuration with the old (if the change comes from update_handler_config/2,3) or with the default (if the change comes from set_handler_config/2,3).
The built-in handlers logger_std_h and logger_disk_log_h are updated accordingly. A bug which could cause inconsistency between the handlers' internal state and the stored configuration is also corrected.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-15364
Fix fallback when custom erl_epmd client does not implement address_please.
Own Id: OTP-15388 Aux Id: PR-1983
The logger ets table did not have the read_concurrency option. This is now added.
Own Id: OTP-15453 Aux Id: ERL-782
During system start, logger has a simple handler which prints to stdout. After the kernel supervision is started, this handler is removed and replaced by the default handler. Due to a bug, logger earlier issued a debug printout saying it received an unexpected message, which was the EXIT message from the simple handler's process. This is now corrected. The simple handler's process now unlinks from the logger process before terminating.
Own Id: OTP-15466 Aux Id: ERL-788
The logger handler logger_std_h would not re-create it's log file if it was removed. Due to this it could not be used with tools like 'logrotate'. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15469

Improvements and New Features

A function inet:getifaddrs/1 that takes a list with a namespace option has been added, for platforms that support that feature, for example Linux (only?).
Own Id: OTP-15121 Aux Id: ERIERL-189, PR-1974
Added the nopush option for TCP sockets, which corresponds to TCP_NOPUSH on *BSD and TCP_CORK on Linux.
This is also used internally in file:sendfile to reduce latency on subsequent send operations.
Own Id: OTP-15357 Aux Id: ERL-698
Optimize handling of send_delay for tcp sockes to better work with the new pollthread implementation introduced in OTP-21.
Own Id: OTP-15471 Aux Id: ERIERL-229

Kernel 6.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix bug causing net_kernel process crash on connection attempt from node with name identical to local node.
Own Id: OTP-15438 Aux Id: ERL-781

Kernel 6.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The values all and none are documented as valid value for the Kernel configuration parameter logger_level, but would cause a crash during node start. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15143
Fix some potential buggy behavior in how ticks are sent on inter node distribution connections. Tick is now sent to c-node even if there are unsent buffered data, as c-nodes need ticks in order to send reply ticks. The amount of sent data was also calculated wrongly when ticks were suppressed due to unsent buffered data.
Own Id: OTP-15162 Aux Id: ERIERL-191
Non semantic change in dist_util.erl to silence dialyzer warning.
Own Id: OTP-15170
Fixed net_kernel:connect_node(node()) to return true (and do nothing) as it always has before OTP-21.0. Also documented this successful "self connect" as the expected behavior.
Own Id: OTP-15182 Aux Id: ERL-643
The single_line option on logger_formatter would in some cases add an unwanted comma after the association arrows in a map. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-15228
Improved robustness of distribution connection setup. In OTP-21.0 a truly asynchronous connection setup was introduced. This is further improvement on that work to make the emulator more robust and also be able to recover in cases when involved Erlang processes misbehave.
Own Id: OTP-15297 Aux Id: OTP-15279, OTP-15280

Improvements and New Features

A new macro, ?LOG(Level,...), is added. This is equivalent to the existing ?LOG_<LEVEL>(...) macros.
A new variant of Logger report callback is added, which takes an extra argument containing options for size limiting and line breaks. Module proc_lib in STDLIB uses this for crash reports.
Logger configuration is now checked a bit more for errors.
Own Id: OTP-15132
The socket options recvtos, recvttl, recvtclass and pktoptions have been implemented in the socket modules. See the documentation for the gen_tcp, gen_udp and inet modules. Note that support for these in the runtime system is platform dependent. Especially for pktoptions which is very Linux specific and obsoleted by the RFCs that defined it.
Own Id: OTP-15145 Aux Id: ERIERL-187
Add logger:set_application_level/2 for setting the logger level of all modules in one application.
Own Id: OTP-15146

Kernel 6.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed bug in net_kernel that could cause an emulator crash if certain connection attempts failed. Bug exists since kernel-6.0 (OTP-21.0).
Own Id: OTP-15280 Aux Id: ERIERL-226, OTP-15279

Kernel 6.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Clarify the documentation of rpc:multicall/5.
Own Id: OTP-10551
The DNS resolver when getting econnrefused from a server retained an invalid socket so look up towards the next server(s) also failed.
Own Id: OTP-13133 Aux Id: PR-1557
No resolver backend returns V4Mapped IPv6 addresses any more. This was inconsistent before, some did, some did not. To facilitate working with such addresses a new function inet:ipv4_mapped_ipv6_address/1 has been added.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13761 Aux Id: ERL-503
The type specifications for file:posix/0 and inet:posix/0 have been updated according to which errors file and socket operations should be able to return.
Own Id: OTP-14019 Aux Id: ERL-550
Fix name resolving in IPv6 only environments when doing the initial distributed connection.
Own Id: OTP-14501
File operations used to accept filenames containing null characters (integer value zero). This caused the name to be truncated and in some cases arguments to primitive operations to be mixed up. Filenames containing null characters inside the filename are now rejected and will cause primitive file operations to fail.
Also environment variable operations used to accept names and values of environment variables containing null characters (integer value zero). This caused operations to silently produce erroneous results. Environment variable names and values containing null characters inside the name or value are now rejected and will cause environment variable operations to fail.
Primitive environment variable operations also used to accept the $= character in environment variable names causing various problems. $= characters in environment variable names are now also rejected.
Also os:cmd/1 now reject null characters inside its command.
erlang:open_port/2 will also reject null characters inside the port name from now on.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-14543 Aux Id: ERL-370
os:putenv and os:getenv no longer access the process environment directly and instead work on a thread-safe emulation. The only observable difference is that it's not kept in sync with libc getenv(3) / putenv(3), so those who relied on that behavior in drivers or NIFs will need to add manual synchronization.
On Windows this means that you can no longer resolve DLL dependencies by modifying the PATH just before loading the driver/NIF. To make this less of a problem, the emulator now adds the target DLL's folder to the DLL search path.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-14666
Fixed connection tick toward primitive hidden nodes (erl_interface) that could cause faulty tick timeout in rare cases when payload data is sent to hidden node but not received.
Own Id: OTP-14681
Make group react immediately on an EXIT-signal from shell in e.g ssh.
Own Id: OTP-14991 Aux Id: PR1705
Calls to gen_tcp:send/2 on closed sockets now returns {error, closed} instead of {error,enotconn}.
Own Id: OTP-15001
The included_applications key are no longer duplicated as application environment variable. Earlier, the included applications could be read both with application:get[_all]_env(...) and application:get[_all]_key(...) functions. Now, it can only be read with application:get[_all]_key(...).
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-15071
Owner and group changes through file:write_file_info, file:change_owner, and file:change_group will no longer report success on permission errors.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-15118

Improvements and New Features

A new logging API is added to Erlang/OTP, see the logger manual page, and section Logging in the Kernel User's Guide.
Calls to error_logger are automatically redirected to the new API, and legacy error logger event handlers can still be used. It is, however, recommended to use the Logger API directly when writing new code.
Notice the following potential incompatibilities:
- Kernel configuration parameters error_logger still works, but is overruled if the default handler's output destination is configured with Kernel configuration parameter logger.
  In general, parameters for configuring error logger are overwritten by new parameters for configuring Logger.
- The concept of SASL error logging is deprecated, meaning that by default the SASL application does not affect which log events are logged.
  By default, supervisor reports and crash reports are logged by the default Logger handler started by Kernel, and end up at the same destination (terminal or file) as other standard log event from Erlang/OTP.
  Progress reports are not logged by default, but can be enabled by setting the primary log level to info, for example with the Kernel configuration parameter logger_level.
  To obtain backwards compatibility with the SASL error logging functionality from earlier releases, set Kernel configuration parameter logger_sasl_compatible to true. This prevents the default Logger handler from logging any supervisor-, crash-, or progress reports. Instead, SASL adds a separate Logger handler during application start, which takes care of these log events. The SASL configuration parameters sasl_error_logger and sasl_errlog_type specify the destination (terminal or file) and severity level to log for these events.
Since Logger is new in Erlang/OTP 21.0, we do reserve the right to introduce changes to the Logger API and functionality in patches following this release. These changes might or might not be backwards compatible with the initial version.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13295
The function inet:i/0 has been documented.
Own Id: OTP-13713 Aux Id: PR-1645
Typespecs for netns and bind_to_device options have been added to gen_tcp, gen_udp and gen_sctp functions.
Own Id: OTP-14359 Aux Id: PR-1816
New functionality for implementation of alternative carriers for the Erlang distribution has been introduced. This mainly consists of support for usage of distribution controller processes (previously only ports could be used as distribution controllers). For more information see ERTS User's Guide ➜ How to implement an Alternative Carrier for the Erlang Distribution ➜ Distribution Module.
Own Id: OTP-14459
seq_trace labels may now be any erlang term.
Own Id: OTP-14899
The SSL distribution protocol -proto inet_tls has stopped setting the SSL option server_name_indication. New verify funs for client and server in inet_tls_dist has been added, not documented yet, that checks node name if present in peer certificate. Usage is still also yet to be documented.
Own Id: OTP-14969 Aux Id: OTP-14465, ERL-598
Changed timeout of gen_server calls to auth server from default 5 seconds to infinity.
Own Id: OTP-15009 Aux Id: ERL-601
The callback module passed as -epmd_module to erl has been expanded to be able to do name and port resolving.
Documentation has also been added in the erl_epmd reference manual and ERTS User's Guide How to Implement an Alternative Node Discovery for Erlang Distribution.
Own Id: OTP-15086 Aux Id: PR-1694
Included config file specified with relative path in sys.config are now first searched for relative to the directory of sys.config itself. If not found, it is also searched for relative to the current working directory. The latter is for backwards compatibility.
Own Id: OTP-15137 Aux Id: PR-1838

Kernel 5.4.3.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Non semantic change in dist_util.erl to silence dialyzer warning.
Own Id: OTP-15170

Kernel 5.4.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix some potential buggy behavior in how ticks are sent on inter node distribution connections. Tick is now sent to c-node even if there are unsent buffered data, as c-nodes need ticks in order to send reply ticks. The amount of sent data was calculated wrongly when ticks where suppressed due to unsent buffered data.
Own Id: OTP-15162 Aux Id: ERIERL-191

Kernel 5.4.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Correct a few contracts.
Own Id: OTP-14889
Reject loading modules with names containing directory separators ('/' or '\' on Windows).
Own Id: OTP-14933 Aux Id: ERL-564, PR-1716
Fix bug in handling of os:cmd/2 option max_size on windows.
Own Id: OTP-14940

Kernel 5.4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Add os:cmd/2 that takes an options map as the second argument.
Add max_size as an option to os:cmd/2 that control the maximum size of the result that os:cmd/2 will return.
Own Id: OTP-14823

Kernel 5.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Refactored an internal API.
Own Id: OTP-14784

Kernel 5.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Processes which did output after switching jobs (Ctrl+G) could be left forever stuck in the io request.
Own Id: OTP-14571 Aux Id: ERL-472

Improvements and New Features

Lock counting can now be fully toggled at runtime in the lock counting emulator (-emu_type lcnt). Everything is enabled by default to match the old behavior, but specific categories can be toggled at will with minimal runtime overhead when disabled. Refer to the documentation on lcnt:rt_mask/1 for details.
Own Id: OTP-13170
lcnt:collect and lcnt:clear will no longer block all other threads in the runtime system.
Own Id: OTP-14412
General Unicode improvements.
Own Id: OTP-14462

Kernel 5.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The documentation for the 'quiet' option in disk_log:open/1 had an incorrect default value.
Own Id: OTP-14498

Kernel 5.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Function inet:ntoa/1 has been fixed to return lowercase letters according to RFC 5935 that has been approved after this function was written. Previously uppercase letters were returned so this may be a backwards incompatible change depending on how the returned address string is used.
Function inet:parse_address/1 has been fixed to accept %-suffixes on scoped addresses. The addresses does not work yet, but gives no parse errors.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13006 Aux Id: ERIERL-20, ERL-429
Fix bug where gethostname would incorrectly fail with enametoolong on Linux.
Own Id: OTP-14310
Fix bug causing code:is_module_native to falsely return true when local call trace is enabled for the module.
Own Id: OTP-14390
Add early reject of invalid node names from distributed nodes.
Own Id: OTP-14426

Improvements and New Features

Since Unicode is now allowed in atoms an extra check is needed for node names, which are restricted to Latin-1.
Own Id: OTP-13805
Replaced usage of deprecated symbolic time unit representations.
Own Id: OTP-13831 Aux Id: OTP-13735
file:write_file(Name, Data, [raw]) would turn Data into a single binary before writing. This meant it could not take advantage of the writev() system call if it was given a list of binaries and told to write with raw mode.
Own Id: OTP-13909
The performance of the disk_log has been somewhat improved in some corner cases (big items), and the documentation has been clarified.
Own Id: OTP-14057 Aux Id: PR-1245
Functions for detecting changed code has been added. code:modified_modules/0 returns all currently loaded modules that have changed on disk. code:module_status/1 returns the status for a module. In the shell and in c module, mm/0 is short for code:modified_modules/0, and lm/0 reloads all currently loaded modules that have changed on disk.
Own Id: OTP-14059
Introduce an event manager in Erlang to handle OS signals. A subset of OS signals may be subscribed to and those are described in the Kernel application.
Own Id: OTP-14186
Sockets can now be bound to device (SO_BINDTODEVICE) on platforms where it is supported.
This has been implemented e.g to support VRF-Lite under Linux; see VRF , and GitHub pull request #1326.
Own Id: OTP-14357 Aux Id: PR-1326
Added option to store shell_history on disk so that the history can be reused between sessions.
Own Id: OTP-14409 Aux Id: PR-1420
The size of crash reports created by gen_server, gen_statem and proc_lib is limited with aid of the Kernel application variable error_logger_format_depth. The purpose is to limit the size of the messages sent to the error_logger process when processes with huge message queues or states crash.
The crash report generated by proc_lib includes the new tag message_queue_len. The neighbour report also includes the new tag current_stacktrace. Finally, the neighbour report no longer includes the tags messages and dictionary.
The new function error_logger:get_format_depth/0 can be used to retrieve the value of the Kernel application variable error_logger_format_depth.
Own Id: OTP-14417
One of the ETS tables used by the global module is created with {read_concurrency, true} in order to reduce contention.
Own Id: OTP-14419
Warnings have been added to the relevant documentation about not using un-secure distributed nodes in exposed environments.
Own Id: OTP-14425

Kernel 5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a race during cleanup of os:cmd that would cause os:cmd to hang indefinitely.
Own Id: OTP-14232 Aux Id: seq13275

Improvements and New Features

The functions in the 'file' module that take a list of paths (e.g. file:path_consult/2) will now continue to search in the path if the path contains something that is not a directory.
Own Id: OTP-14191
Two OTP processes that are known to receive many messages are 'rex' (used by 'rpc') and 'error_logger'. Those processes will now store unprocessed messages outside the process heap, which will potentially decrease the cost of garbage collections.
Own Id: OTP-14192

Kernel 5.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

code:add_pathsa/1 and command line option -pa both revert the given list of directories when adding it at the beginning of the code path. This is now documented.
Own Id: OTP-13920 Aux Id: ERL-267
Add lost runtime dependency to erts-8.1. This should have been done in kernel-5.1 (OTP-19.1) as it cannot run without at least erts-8.1 (OTP-19.1).
Own Id: OTP-14003
Type and doc for gen_{tcp,udp,sctp}:controlling_process/2 has been improved.
Own Id: OTP-14022 Aux Id: PR-1208

Kernel 5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a memory leak when calling seq_trace:get_system_tracer().
Own Id: OTP-13742
Fix for the problem that when adding the ebin directory of an application to the code path, the code:priv_dir/1 function returns an incorrect path to the priv directory of the same application.
Own Id: OTP-13758 Aux Id: ERL-195
Fix code_server crash when adding code paths of two levels.
Own Id: OTP-13765 Aux Id: ERL-194
Respect -proto_dist switch while connection to EPMD
Own Id: OTP-13770 Aux Id: PR-1129
Fixed a bug where init:stop could deadlock if a process with infinite shutdown timeout (e.g. a supervisor) attempted to load code while terminating.
Own Id: OTP-13802
Close stdin of commands run in os:cmd. This is a backwards compatibility fix that restores the behaviour of pre 19.0 os:cmd.
Own Id: OTP-13867 Aux Id: seq13178

Improvements and New Features

Add net_kernel:setopts/2 and net_kernel:getopts/2 to control options for distribution sockets in runtime.
Own Id: OTP-13564
Rudimentary support for DSCP has been implemented in the guise of a tclass socket option for IPv6 sockets.
Own Id: OTP-13582

Kernel 5.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When calling os:cmd from a process that has set trap_exit to true an 'EXIT' message would be left in the message queue. This bug was introduced in kernel vsn 5.0.1.
Own Id: OTP-13813

Kernel 5.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a os:cmd bug where creating a background job using & would cause os:cmd to hang until the background job terminated or closed its stdout and stderr file descriptors. This bug has existed from kernel 5.0.
Own Id: OTP-13741

Kernel 5.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The handling of on_load functions has been improved. The major improvement is that if a code upgrade fails because the on_load function fails, the previous version of the module will now be retained.
Own Id: OTP-12593
rpc:call() and rpc:block_call() would sometimes cause an exception (which was not mentioned in the documentation). This has been corrected so that {badrpc,Reason} will be returned instead.
Own Id: OTP-13409
On Windows, for modules that were loaded early (such as the lists module), code:which/1 would return the path with mixed slashes and backslashes, for example: "C:\\Program Files\\erl8.0/lib/stdlib-2.7/ebin/lists.beam". This has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-13410
Make file:datasync use fsync instead of fdatasync on Mac OSX.
Own Id: OTP-13411
The default chunk size for the fallback sendfile implementation, used on platforms that do not have a native sendfile, has been decreased in order to reduce connectivity issues.
Own Id: OTP-13444
Large file writes (2Gb or more) could fail on some Unix platforms (for example, OS X and FreeBSD).
Own Id: OTP-13461
A bug has been fixed where the DNS resolver inet_res did not refresh its view of the contents of for example resolv.conf immediately after start and hence then failed name resolution. Reported and fix suggested by Michal Ptaszek in GitHUB pull req #949.
Own Id: OTP-13470 Aux Id: Pull #969
Fix process leak from global_group.
Own Id: OTP-13516 Aux Id: PR-1008
The function inet:gethostbyname/1 now honors the resolver option inet6 instead of always looking up IPv4 addresses.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13622 Aux Id: PR-1065
The Status argument to init:stop/1 is now sanity checked to make sure erlang:halt does not fail.
Own Id: OTP-13631 Aux Id: PR-911

Improvements and New Features

Add {line_delim, byte()} option to inet:setopts/2 and decode_packet/3
Own Id: OTP-12837
Added os:perf_counter/1.
The perf_counter is a very very cheap and high resolution timer that can be used to timestamp system events. It does not have monoticity guarantees, but should on most OS's expose a monotonous time.
Own Id: OTP-12908
The os:cmd call has been optimized on unix platforms to be scale better with the number of schedulers.
Own Id: OTP-13089
New functions that can load multiple modules at once have been added to the 'code' module. The functions are code:atomic_load/1, code:prepare_loading/1, code:finish_loading/1, and code:ensure_modules_loaded/1.
Own Id: OTP-13111
The code path cache feature turned out not to be very useful in practice and has been removed. If an attempt is made to enable the code path cache, there will be a warning report informing the user that the feature has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-13191
When an attempt is made to start a distributed Erlang node with the same name as an existing node, the error message will be much shorter and easier to read than before. Example:
Protocol 'inet_tcp': the name somename@somehost seems to be in use by another Erlang node
Own Id: OTP-13294
The output of the default error logger is somewhat prettier and easier to read. The default error logger is used during start-up of the OTP system. If the start-up fails, the output will be easier to read.
Own Id: OTP-13325
The functions rpc:safe_multi_server_call/2,3 that were deprecated in R12B have been removed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-13449
Update the error reasons in dist_util, and show them in the logs if net_kernel:verbose(1) has been called.
Own Id: OTP-13458
Experimental support for Unix Domain Sockets has been implemented. Read the sources if you want to try it out. Example: gen_udp:open(0, [{ifaddr,{local,"/tmp/socket"}}]). Documentation will be written after user feedback on the experimental API.
Own Id: OTP-13572 Aux Id: PR-612
Allow heart to be configured to not kill the previous emulator before calling the HEART_COMMAND. This is done by setting the environment variable HEART_NO_KILL to TRUE.
Own Id: OTP-13650

Kernel 4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

code:load_abs([10100]) would bring down the entire runtime system and create a crash dump. Corrected to generate an error exception in the calling process.
Also corrected specs for code loading functions and added more information in the documentation about the error reasons returned by code-loading functions.
Own Id: OTP-9375
gen_tcp:accept/2 was not time warp safe. This since it used the same time as returned by erlang:now/0 when calculating timeout. This has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-13254 Aux Id: OTP-11997, OTP-13222
Correct the contract for inet:getifaddrs/1.
Own Id: OTP-13335 Aux Id: ERL-95

Improvements and New Features

Time warp safety improvements.
Introduced the options monotonic_timestamp, and strict_monotonic_timestamp to the trace, sequential trace, and system profile functionality. This since the already existing timestamp option is not time warp safe.
Introduced the option safe_fixed_monotonic_time to ets:info/2 and dets:info/2. This since the already existing safe_fixed option is not time warp safe.
Own Id: OTP-13222 Aux Id: OTP-11997
Add validation callback for heart
The erlang heart process may now have a validation callback installed. The validation callback will be executed, if present, before any heartbeat to heart port program. If the validation fails, or stalls, no heartbeat will be sent and the node will go down.
With the option 'check_schedulers' heart executes a responsiveness check of the schedulers before a heartbeat is sent to the port program. If the responsiveness check fails, the heartbeat will not be performed (as intended).
Own Id: OTP-13250
Clarify documentation of net_kernel:allow/1
Own Id: OTP-13299
EPMD supports both IPv4 and IPv6
Also affects oldest supported windows version.
Own Id: OTP-13364

Kernel 4.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Host name lookups though inet_res, the Erlang DNS resolver, are now done case insensitively according to RFC 4343. Patch by Holger Weiß.
Own Id: OTP-12836
IPv6 distribution handler has been updated to share code with IPv4 so that all features are supported in IPv6 as well. A bug when using an IPv4 address as hostname has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-13040
Caching of host names in the internal DNS resolver inet_res has been made character case insensitive for host names according to RFC 4343.
Own Id: OTP-13083
Cooked file mode buffering has been fixed so file:position/2 now works according to Posix on Posix systems i.e. when file:position/2 returns an error the file pointer is unaffected.
The Windows system documentation, however, is unclear on this point so the documentation of file:position/2 still does not promise anything.
Cooked file mode file:pread/2,3 and file:pwrite/2,3 have been corrected to honor character encoding like the combination of file:position/2 and file:read/2 or file:write/2 already does. This is probably not very useful since the character representation on the caller's side is latin1, period.
Own Id: OTP-13155 Aux Id: PR#646

Improvements and New Features

Add {line_delim, byte()} option to inet:setopts/2 and decode_packet/3
Own Id: OTP-12837

Kernel 4.1

Improvements and New Features

A mechanism for limiting the amount of text that the built-in error logger events will produce has been introduced. It is useful for limiting both the size of log files and the CPU time used to produce them.
This mechanism is experimental in the sense that it may be changed if it turns out that it does not solve the problem it is supposed to solve. In that case, there may be backward incompatible improvements to this mechanism.
See the documentation for the config parameter error_logger_format_depth in the Kernel application for information about how to turn on this feature.
Own Id: OTP-12864

Kernel 4.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix error handling in file:read_line/1 for Unicode contents.
Own Id: OTP-12144
Introduce os:getenv/2 which is similar to os:getenv/1 but returns the passed default value if the required environment variable is undefined.
Own Id: OTP-12342
It is now possible to paste text in JCL mode (using Ctrl-Y) that has been copied in the previous shell session. Also a bug that caused the JCL mode to crash when pasting text has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-12673
Ensure that each segment of an IPv6 address when parsed from a string has a maximum of 4 hex digits
Own Id: OTP-12773

Improvements and New Features

New BIF: erlang:get_keys/0, lists all keys associated with the process dictionary. Note: erlang:get_keys/0 is auto-imported.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-12151 Aux Id: seq12521
The internal group to user_drv protocol has been changed to be synchronous in order to guarantee that output sent to a process implementing the user_drv protocol is printed before replying. This protocol is used by the standard_output device and the ssh application when acting as a client.
This change changes the previous unlimited buffer when printing to standard_io and other devices that end up in user_drv to 1KB.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-12240
The inflateInit/2 and deflateInit/6 functions now accepts a WindowBits argument equal to 8 and -8.
Own Id: OTP-12564
Map error logger warnings to warning messages by default.
Own Id: OTP-12755
Map beam error logger warnings to warning messages by default. Previously these messages were mapped to the error channel by default.
Own Id: OTP-12781
gen_tcp:shutdown/2 is now asynchronous
This solves the following problems with the old implementation:
It doesn't block when the TCP peer is idle or slow. This is the expected behaviour when shutdown() is called: the caller needs to be able to continue reading from the socket, not be prevented from doing so.
It doesn't truncate the output. The current version of gen_tcp:shutdown/2 will truncate any outbound data in the driver queue after about 10 seconds if the TCP peer is idle of slow. Worse yet, it doesn't even inform anyone that the data has been truncated: 'ok' is returned to the caller; and a FIN rather than an RST is sent to the TCP peer.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-12797
There are many cases where user code needs to be able to distinguish between a socket that was closed normally and one that was aborted. Setting the option {show_econnreset, true} enables the user to receive ECONNRESET errors on both active and passive sockets.
Own Id: OTP-12843

Kernel 3.2.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The 'raw' socket option could not be used multiple times in one call to any e.g gen_tcp function because only one of the occurrences were used. This bug has been fixed, and also a small bug concerning propagating error codes from within inet:setopts/2.
Own Id: OTP-11482 Aux Id: seq12872

Kernel 3.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug causing an infinite loop in hostname resolving has been corrected. To trigger this bug you would have to enter an bogus search method from a configuration file e.g .inetrc.
Bug pinpointed by Emil Holmström
Own Id: OTP-12133
The standard_error process now handles the getopts I/O protocol request correctly and stores its encoding in the same way as standard_io.
Also, io:put_chars(standard_error, [oops]) could previously crash the standard_error process. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-12424

Improvements and New Features

Configuration parameters for the Kernel application that allows setting socket options for the distribution sockets have been added. See the application Kernel documentation; parameters 'inet_dist_listen_options' and 'inet_dist_connect_options'.
Own Id: OTP-12476 Aux Id: OTP-12476

Kernel 3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Make sure to install .hrl files when needed
Own Id: OTP-12197
Removed the undocumented application environment variable 'raw_files' from the kernel application. This variable was checked (by call to application:get_env/2) each time a raw file was to be opened in the file module.
Own Id: OTP-12276
A bug has been fixed when using the netns option to gen_udp, which accidentally only worked if it was the last option.
Own Id: OTP-12314

Improvements and New Features

Updated documentation for inet buffer size options.
Own Id: OTP-12296
Introduce new option 'raw' in file_info and link_info functions. This option allows the caller not to go through the file server for information about files guaranteed to be local.
Own Id: OTP-12325

Kernel 3.0.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Accept inet:ip_address() in net_adm:names/1
Own Id: OTP-12154

Kernel 3.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

OTP-11850 fixed filelib:wildcard/1 to work with broken symlinks. This correction, however, introduced problems since symlinks were no longer followed for functions like filelib:ensure_dir/1, filelib:is_dir/1, filelib:file_size/1, etc. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-12054 Aux Id: seq12660

Kernel 3.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

If the Config given to application_controller:change_application_data included other config files, it was only expanded for already existing (loaded) applications. If an upgrade added a new application which had config data in an included config file, the new application did not get correct config data.
This is now changed so config data will be expanded for all applications.
Own Id: OTP-11864
It was allowed to re-load pre-loaded modules such as erlang, but that could cause strange and unwanted things to happen, such as call apply/3 to loop. Pre-loaded modules are now sticky by default. (Thanks to Loïc Hoguin for reporting this bug.)
code:add_path("/ending/in/slash/") removes the trailing slash, adding /ending/in/slash to the code path. However, code:del_path("/ending/in/slash/") would fail to remove the path since it did not remove the trailing slash. This has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-11913
Fix erts_debug:size/1 to handle Map sizes
Own Id: OTP-11923
The documentation for file:file_info/1 has been removed. The function itself was removed a long time ago.
Own Id: OTP-11982

Kernel 3.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a deadlock possibility in terminate application
Own Id: OTP-11171
Fixed bug where sendfile would return the wrong error code for a remotely closed socket if the socket was in passive mode. (Thanks to Vincent Siliakus for reporting the bug.)
Own Id: OTP-11614
The new option persistent is added to application:set_env/4 and application:unset_env/3. An environment key set with the persistent option will not be overridden by the ones configured in the application resource file on load. This means persistent values will stick after the application is loaded and also on application reload. (Thanks to José Valim)
Own Id: OTP-11708
The spec for file:set_cwd/1 is modified to also accept binaries as arguments. This has always been allowed in the code, but it was not reflected in the spec since binaries are mostly used for raw file names. Raw file names are names that are not encoded according to file:native_name_encoding(), and these are not allowed in file:set_cwd/1. The spec is now, however, more allowing in order to avoid unnecessary dialyzer warnings. Raw file names will still fail in runtime with reason 'no_translation'. (Thanks to José Valim)
Own Id: OTP-11787

Improvements and New Features

heart:set_cmd/1 is updated to allow unicode code points > 255 in the given heart command
Own Id: OTP-10843
Dialyzer's unmatched_return warnings have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-10908
Make erlang:open_port/2 spawn and spawn_executable handle unicode.
Own Id: OTP-11105
Erlang/OTP has been ported to the realtime operating system OSE. The port supports both smp and non-smp emulator. For details around the port and how to started see the User's Guide in the ose application.
Note that not all parts of Erlang/OTP has been ported.
Notable things that work are: non-smp and smp emulators, OSE signal interaction, crypto, asn1, run_erl/to_erl, tcp, epmd, distribution and most if not all non-os specific functionality of Erlang.
Notable things that does not work are: udp/sctp, os_mon, erl_interface, binding of schedulers.
Own Id: OTP-11334
Add the {active,N} socket option for TCP, UDP, and SCTP, where N is an integer in the range -32768..32767, to allow a caller to specify the number of data messages to be delivered to the controlling process. Once the socket's delivered message count either reaches 0 or is explicitly set to 0 with inet:setopts/2 or by including {active,0} as an option when the socket is created, the socket transitions to passive ({active, false}) mode and the socket's controlling process receives a message to inform it of the transition. TCP sockets receive {tcp_passive,Socket}, UDP sockets receive {udp_passive,Socket} and SCTP sockets receive {sctp_passive,Socket}.
The socket's delivered message counter defaults to 0, but it can be set using {active,N} via any gen_tcp, gen_udp, or gen_sctp function that takes socket options as arguments, or via inet:setopts/2. New N values are added to the socket's current counter value, and negative numbers can be used to reduce the counter value. Specifying a number that would cause the socket's counter value to go above 32767 causes an einval error. If a negative number is specified such that the counter value would become negative, the socket's counter value is set to 0 and the socket transitions to passive mode. If the counter value is already 0 and inet:setopts(Socket, [{active,0}]) is specified, the counter value remains at 0 but the appropriate passive mode transition message is generated for the socket.
Thanks to Steve Vinoski
Own Id: OTP-11368
A call to either the garbage_collect/1 BIF or the check_process_code/2 BIF may trigger garbage collection of another processes than the process calling the BIF. The previous implementations performed these kinds of garbage collections without considering the internal state of the process being garbage collected. In order to be able to more easily and more efficiently implement yielding native code, these types of garbage collections have been rewritten. A garbage collection like this is now triggered by an asynchronous request signal, the actual garbage collection is performed by the process being garbage collected itself, and finalized by a reply signal to the process issuing the request. Using this approach processes can disable garbage collection and yield without having to set up the heap in a state that can be garbage collected.
The garbage_collect/2, and check_process_code/3 BIFs have been introduced. Both taking an option list as last argument. Using these, one can issue asynchronous requests.
code:purge/1 and code:soft_purge/1 have been rewritten to utilize asynchronous check_process_code requests in order to parallelize work.
Characteristics impact: A call to the garbage_collect/1 BIF or the check_process_code/2 BIF will normally take longer time to complete while the system as a whole won't be as much negatively effected by the operation as before. A call to code:purge/1 and code:soft_purge/1 may complete faster or slower depending on the state of the system while the system as a whole won't be as much negatively effected by the operation as before.
Own Id: OTP-11388 Aux Id: OTP-11535, OTP-11648
Add sync option to file:open/2.
The sync option adds the POSIX O_SYNC flag to the open system call on platforms that support the flag or its equivalent, e.g., FILE_FLAG_WRITE_THROUGH on Windows. For platforms that don't support it, file:open/2 returns {error, enotsup} if the sync option is passed in. Thank to Steve Vinoski and Joseph Blomstedt
Own Id: OTP-11498
The contract of inet:ntoa/1 has been corrected.
Thanks to Max Treskin.
Own Id: OTP-11730

Kernel 2.16.4.1

Known Bugs and Problems

When using gen_tcp:connect and the fd option with port and/or ip, the port and ip options were ignored. This has been fixed so that if port and/or ip is specified together with fd a bind is requested for that fd. If port and/or ip is not specified bind will not be called.
Own Id: OTP-12061

Kernel 2.16.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix the typespec for the inet:ifget/2 and inet:ifget/3 return value. Thanks to Ali Sabil.
Own Id: OTP-11377
Fix various typos in erts, kernel and ssh. Thanks to Martin Hässler.
Own Id: OTP-11414
Fix rpc multicall sample code. Thanks to Edwin Fine.
Own Id: OTP-11471
Under rare circumstances a process calling inet:close/1, gen_tcp:close/1, gen_udp:close/1, or gen_sctp:close/1 could hang in the call indefinitely.
Own Id: OTP-11491

Improvements and New Features

Add more SCTP errors as described in RFC 4960. Thanks to Artem Teslenko.
Own Id: OTP-11379
Add new BIF os:unsetenv/1 which deletes an environment variable. Thanks to Martin Hässler.
Own Id: OTP-11446

Kernel 2.16.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix indentation of User switch command help in Erlang shell. Thanks to Sylvain Benner.
Own Id: OTP-11209

Improvements and New Features

The previous undocumented function ntoa/1 has been added to inet docs and exported in the inet module.
Own Id: OTP-10676 Aux Id: OTP-10314
Fix typo in abcast() function comment. Thanks to Johannes Weissl.
Own Id: OTP-11219
Add application:ensure_all_started/1-2. Thanks to Fred Hebert.
Own Id: OTP-11250
Make edlin understand a few important control keys. Thanks to Stefan Zegenhagen.
Own Id: OTP-11251
Cleanup of hipe_unified_loader, eliminating uses of is_subtype/2 in specs, change module-local void functions to return 'ok' instead of [] and made sure there are no dialyzer warnings with --Wunmatched_returns. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.
Own Id: OTP-11301

Kernel 2.16.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug in prim_inet has been corrected. If the port owner was killed at a bad time while closing the socket port the port could become orphaned hence causing port and socket leaking. Reported by Fred Herbert, Dmitry Belyaev and others.
Own Id: OTP-10497 Aux Id: OTP-10562
A few bugs regarding case sensitivity for hostname resolution while using e.g the internal lookup types 'file' and 'dns' has been corrected. When looking up hostnames ASCII letters a-z are to be regarded as the same as A-Z according to RFC 4343 "Domain Name System (DNS) Case Insensitivity Clarification", and this was not always the case.
Own Id: OTP-10689 Aux Id: seq12227

Improvements and New Features

Add application:ensure_started/1,2. It is equivavlent to application:start/1,2 except it returns ok for already started applications.
Own Id: OTP-10910
Optimize communication with file io server. Thanks to Anthony Ramine.
Own Id: OTP-11040
Erlang source files with non-ASCII characters are now encoded in UTF-8 (instead of latin1).
Own Id: OTP-11041 Aux Id: OTP-10907
Optimization of simultaneous inet_db operations on the same socket by using a lock free implementation.
Impact on the characteristics of the system: Improved performance.
Own Id: OTP-11074
The high_msgq_watermark and low_msgq_watermark inet socket options introduced in OTP-R16A could only be set on TCP sockets. These options are now generic and can be set on all types of sockets.
Own Id: OTP-11075 Aux Id: OTP-10336
Fix deep list argument error under Windows in os:cmd/1. Thanks to Aleksandr Vinokurov .
Own Id: OTP-11104

Kernel 2.16.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug that could cause a crash with wrong reason has been corrected in the application_controller module.
Own Id: OTP-10754
Fix code:is_module_native/1 that sometimes in R16A returned false for hipe compiled modules containing BIFs such as lists.
Own Id: OTP-10870
Respect {exit_on_close,false} option on tcp socket in non-passive mode when receiving fails (due to an ill-formed packet for example) by only doing a half close and still allow sending on the socket. (Thanks to Anthony Molinaro and Steve Vinoski for reporting the problem)
Own Id: OTP-10879

Improvements and New Features

Slightly nicer error message when node start fails due to duplicate name. Thanks to Magnus Henoch.
Own Id: OTP-10797
Miscellaneous updates due to Unicode support.
Own Id: OTP-10820
Add a new function code:get_mode() can be used to detect how the code servers behaves. Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu
Own Id: OTP-10823
Fix type of error Reason on gen_tcp:send/2. Thanks to Sean Cribbs.
Own Id: OTP-10839
file:list_dir_all/1 and file:read_link_all/1 that can handle raw file names have been added. See the User Guide for STDLIB for information about raw file names.
Own Id: OTP-10852

Kernel 2.16

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

It is no longer possible to have {Mod,Vsn} in the 'modules' list in a .app file.
This was earlier possible, although never documented in the .app file reference manual. It was however visible in the documentation of application:load/[1,2], where the same term as in a .app file can be used as the first argument.
The possibility has been removed since the Vsn part was never used.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-10417
The contract of erl_ddll:format_error/1 has been corrected. (Thanks to Joseph Wayne Norton.)
Own Id: OTP-10473
Change printout of application crash message on startup to formatted strings (Thanks to Serge Aleynikov)
Own Id: OTP-10620
The type ascii_string() in the base64 module has been corrected. The type file:file_info() has been cleaned up. The type file:fd() has been made opaque in the documentation.
Own Id: OTP-10624 Aux Id: kunagi-352 [263]

Improvements and New Features

Inet exported functionality
inet:parse_ipv4_address/1, inet:parse_ipv4strict_address/1, inet:parse_ipv6_address/1, inet:parse_ipv6strict_address/1, inet:parse_address/1 and inet:parse_strict_address is now exported from the inet module.
Own Id: OTP-8067 Aux Id: kunagi-274 [185]
A boolean socket option 'ipv6_v6only' for IPv6 sockets has been added. The default value of the option is OS dependent, so applications aiming to be portable should consider using {ipv6_v6only,true} when creating an inet6 listening/destination socket, and if necessary also create an inet socket on the same port for IPv4 traffic. See the documentation.
Own Id: OTP-8928 Aux Id: kunagi-193 [104]
Support for Unicode has been implemented.
Own Id: OTP-10302
The documentation for global:register_name/3 has been updated to mention that the use of {Module,Function} as the method argument (resolve function) is deprecated.
Own Id: OTP-10419
Fixed bug where sendfile on oracle solaris would return an error when a partial send was done.
Own Id: OTP-10549
The error_handler module will now call '$handle_undefined_function'/2 if an attempt is made to call a non-existing function in a module that exists. See the documentation for error_handler module for details.
Own Id: OTP-10617 Aux Id: kunagi-340 [251]
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.
Own Id: OTP-10630
Do not return wrong terms unnecessarily. (Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.)
Own Id: OTP-10662
Some examples overflowing the width of PDF pages have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-10665
Add file:allocate/3 operation
This operation allows pre-allocation of space for files. It succeeds only on systems that support such operation. (Thanks to Filipe David Manana)
Own Id: OTP-10680
Add application:get_key/3. The new function provides a default value for a configuration parameter. Thanks to Serge Aleynikov.
Own Id: OTP-10694
Add search to Erlang shell's history. Thanks to Fred Herbert.
Own Id: OTP-10739

Kernel 2.15.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Ensure 'erl_crash.dump' when asked for it. This will change erl_crash.dump behaviour.
* Not setting ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS will now terminate beam immediately on a crash without writing a crash dump file.
* Setting ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS to 0 will also terminate beam immediately on a crash without writing a crash dump file, i.e. same as not setting ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS environment variable.
* Setting ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS to a negative value will let the beam wait indefinitely on the crash dump file being written.
* Setting ERL_CRASH_DUMP_SECONDS to a positive value will let the beam wait that many seconds on the crash dump file being written.
A positive value will set an alarm/timeout for restart both in beam and in heart if heart is running.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-10422 Aux Id: kunagi-250 [161]

Kernel 2.15.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed issue where using controlling_process/2 with self() as the second argument caused the port to leak if self() crashes. (Thanks to Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez)
Own Id: OTP-10094
When sending large files using the file:sendfile fallback file:sendfile would crash. This is now fixed.
Own Id: OTP-10098
Fix rpc:call/5 for local calls with a finite Timeout (Thanks to Tomer Chachamu)
Own Id: OTP-10149
fix escript/primary archive reloading
If the mtime of an escript/primary archive file changes after being added to the code path, correctly reload the archive and update the cache. (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)
Own Id: OTP-10151
Support added for home directories named with non-ASCII characters (codepoints above 127) on a system running in Unicode file mode (e.g. on MacOSX or Linux with startup arguments +fnu or +fna with the right LOCALE). Also environment variables with Unicode content are supported in applicable environments.
Own Id: OTP-10160
Allow mixed IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to sctp_bindx
Also allow mixed address families to bind, since the first address on a multihomed sctp socket must be bound with bind, while the rest are to be bound using sctp_bindx. At least Linux supports adding address of mixing families. Make inet_set_faddress function available also when HAVE_SCTP is not defined, since we use it to find an address for bind to be able to mix ipv4 and ipv6 addresses. Thanks to Tomas Abrahamsson
Own Id: OTP-10217

Improvements and New Features

Document inet options: high_watermark, priority, linger and a some other options that previously was undocumented.
Own Id: OTP-10053
Remove bit8 option support from inet
Own Id: OTP-10056
The type of the disk log header has been corrected. (Thanks to Niclas Eklund.)
Own Id: OTP-10131

Kernel 2.15.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Driver output has been corrected so output of large binaries (> 4 GiB) now does not silently fail or crash the emulator, but either outputs the binary or fails the call. This means that writing a binary > 4 Gib to file now works but on e.g 64-bit Windows (that has scatter/gather I/O buffer segment lengths of 32 bits) fails. The behaviour may change in the future to always write the binary, in parts if necessary.
Own Id: OTP-9820 Aux Id: OTP-9795
erts: minor fix for unnecessary condition erts: change SENDFILE_CHUNK_SIZE from signed to unsigned (Thanks to jovi zhang)
Own Id: OTP-9872
Two contracts in gen_sctp have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-9874
If a process calls a module with an running on_load handler, the process is supposed to be suspended. But if the module with the on_load handler was loading used code:load_binary/3, the call would instead fail with an undef exception.
Own Id: OTP-9875
File name and error reason is now returned if creation of a cookie fails. (Thanks to Magnus Henoch)
Own Id: OTP-9954
Fix port leak in zlib when passing invalid data to compress,uncompress,zip,unzip,gzip,gunzip.
Own Id: OTP-9981
Various typographical errors corrected in documentation for the global, error_logger, etop, lists, ets and supervisor modules and in the c_portdriver and kernel_app documentation. (Thanks to Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez)
Own Id: OTP-9987
Fix returned error from gen_tcp:accept/1,2 when running out of ports.
The {error, enfile} return value is badly misleading and confusing for this case, since the Posix ENFILE errno value has a well-defined meaning that has nothing to do with Erlang ports. The fix changes the return value to {error, system_limit}, which is consistent with e.g. various file(3) functions. inet:format_error/1 has also been updated to support system_limit in the same manner as file:format_error/1. (Thanks to Per Hedeland)
Own Id: OTP-9990
erts_debug:size/1 has been corrected to take sharing in the environment of funs into account. For funs it used to always give the same result as erts_debug:flat_size/1.
Own Id: OTP-9991
In some cases when the process doing file:sendfile crashes while sending the file the efile_drv code would not clean up after itself correctly. This has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-9993
On BSD based platforms file:sendfile would sometime go into an infinite loop when sending big files. This has now been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-9994
While disk_log eagerly collects logged terms for better performance, collecting too much data may choke the system and cause huge binaries to be written.
The problem was addressed in OTP-9764, but the situation was not improved in all cases.
(Thanks to Richard Carlsson.)
Own Id: OTP-9999 Aux Id: OTP-9764
The documentation of .app files incorrectly said that the default value for the mod parameter is undefined. This is now corrected to [].
Own Id: OTP-10002

Kernel 2.15

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Calls to global:whereis_name/1 have been substituted for calls to global:safe_whereis_name/1 since the latter is not safe at all.
The reason for not doing this earlier is that setting a global lock masked out a bug concerning the restart of supervised children. The bug has now been fixed by a modification of global:whereis_name/1. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger for code contribution.)
A minor race conditions in gen_fsm:start* has been fixed: if one of these functions returned {error, Reason} or ignore, the name could still be registered (either locally or in global. (This is the same modification as was done for gen_server in OTP-7669.)
The undocumented function global:safe_whereis_name/1 has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-9212 Aux Id: seq7117, OTP-4174
Honor option packet_size for http packet parsing by both TCP socket and erlang:decode_packet. This gives the ability to accept HTTP headers larger than the default setting, but also avoid DoS attacks by accepting lines only up to whatever length you wish to allow. For consistency, packet type line also honor option packet_size. (Thanks to Steve Vinoski)
Own Id: OTP-9389
disk_log:reopen/2,3 and disk_log:breopen/3 could return the error reason from file:rename/2 rather than the reason {file_error, Filename, Reason}. This bug has been fixed.
The message {disk_log, Node, {error, disk_log_stopped}} which according the documentation is sent upon failure to truncate or reopen a disk log was sometimes turned into a reply. This bug has been fixed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-9508
Environment variable 'shutdown_timeout' is added to kernel application. Earlier, application_controller would hang forever if an application top supervisor did not terminate upon a shutdown request. If this new environment variable is set to a positive integer T, then application controller will now give up after T milliseconds and instead brutally kill the application. For backwards compatibility, the default value for shutdown_timeout is 'infinity'.
Own Id: OTP-9540
Add '-callback' attributes in stdlib's behaviours
Replace the behaviour_info(callbacks) export in stdlib's behaviours with -callback' attributes for all the callbacks. Update the documentation with information on the callback attribute Automatically generate 'behaviour_info' function from '-callback' attributes
'behaviour_info(callbacks)' is a special function that is defined in a module which describes a behaviour and returns a list of its callbacks.
This function is now automatically generated using the '-callback' specs. An error is returned by lint if user defines both '-callback' attributes and the behaviour_info/1 function. If no type info is needed for a callback use a generic spec for it. Add '-callback' attribute to language syntax
Behaviours may define specs for their callbacks using the familiar spec syntax, replacing the '-spec' keyword with '-callback'. Simple lint checks are performed to ensure that no callbacks are defined twice and all types referred are declared.
These attributes can be then used by tools to provide documentation to the behaviour or find discrepancies in the callback definitions in the callback module.
Add callback specs into 'application' module in kernel Add callback specs to tftp module following internet documentation Add callback specs to inets_service module following possibly deprecated comments
Own Id: OTP-9621
make tab completion work in remote shells (Thanks to Mats Cronqvist)
Own Id: OTP-9673
Add missing parenthesis in heart doc.
Add missing spaces in the Reference Manual distributed section.
In the HTML version of the doc those spaces are necessary to separate those words.
Own Id: OTP-9693
Fixes net_kernel:get_net_ticktime() doc
Adds missing description when `ignored' is returned. (Thanks to Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez )
Own Id: OTP-9713
While disk_log eagerly collects logged terms for better performance, collecting too much data may choke the system and cause huge binaries to be written. In order to remedy the situation a (small) limit on the amount of data that is collected before writing to disk has been introduced.
Own Id: OTP-9764
- Correct callback spec in application module
- Refine warning about callback specs with extra ranges
- Cleanup autoimport compiler directives
- Fix Dialyzer's warnings in typer
- Fix Dialyzer's warning for its own code
- Fix bug in Dialyzer's behaviours analysis
- Fix crash in Dialyzer
- Variable substitution was not generalizing any unknown variables.
Own Id: OTP-9776
Fix a crash when file:change_time/2,3 are called with invalid dates
Calling file:change_time/2,3 with an invalid date tuple (e.g file:change_time("file.txt", {undefined, undefined})) will cause file_server_2 to crash. error_logger will shutdown and the whole VM will stop. Change behavior to validate given dates on system boundaries. (i.e before issuing a server call).(Thanks to Ahmed Omar)
Own Id: OTP-9785

Improvements and New Features

An option list argument can now be passed to file:read_file_info/2, file:read_link_info/2 and file:write_file_info/3 and set time type information in the call. Valid options are {time, local}, {time, universal} and {time, posix}. In the case of posix time no conversions are made which makes the operation a bit faster.
Own Id: OTP-7687
file:list_dir/1,2 will now fill an buffer entire with filenames from the efile driver before sending it to an erlang process. This will speed up this file operation in most cases.
Own Id: OTP-9023
gen_sctp:open/0-2 may now return {error,eprotonosupport} if SCTP is not supported
gen_sctp:peeloff/1 has been implemented and creates a one-to-one socket which also are supported now
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-9239
Sendfile has been added to the file module's API. sendfile/2 is used to read data from a file and send it to a tcp socket using a zero copying mechanism if available on that OS.
Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz and Steve Vinovski for original implementation
Own Id: OTP-9240
Tuple funs (a two-element tuple with a module name and a function) are now officially deprecated and will be removed in R16. Use 'fun M:F/A' instead. To make you aware that your system uses tuple funs, the very first time a tuple fun is applied, a warning will be sent to the error logger.
Own Id: OTP-9649

Kernel 2.14.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix type of Packet arg of gen_tcp:send/2 and gen_udp:send/4
The type is marked as a binary() or a string() but in practice it can be an iodata(). The test suite was updated to confirm the gen_tcp/2 and gen_udp:send/4 functions accept iodata() (iolists) packets. (Thanks to Filipe David Manana)
Own Id: OTP-9514
XML files have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-9550 Aux Id: OTP-9541

Improvements and New Features

The types and specifications of the inet modules have been improved.
Own Id: OTP-9260
Types and specifications have been added.
Own Id: OTP-9356
Contracts in STDLIB and Kernel have been improved and type errors have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-9485
Update documentation and specifications of some of the zlib functions.
Own Id: OTP-9506

Kernel 2.14.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The send_timeout option in gen_tcp did not work properly in active mode or with {active,once} options. This is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-9145
Fixed various typos across the documentation (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)
Own Id: OTP-9154
Fix typo in doc of rpc:pmap/3 (Thanks to Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez)
Own Id: OTP-9168
A bug in inet_res, the specialized DNS resolver, has been corrected. A late answer with unfortunate timing could cause a runtime exception. Some code cleanup and improvements also tagged along. Thanks to Evegeniy Khramtsov for a pinpointing bug report and bug fix testing.
Own Id: OTP-9221 Aux Id: OTP-8712

Improvements and New Features

Types and specifications have been added.
Own Id: OTP-9268
Erlang types and specifications are used for documentation.
Own Id: OTP-9272
Two opaque types that could cause warnings when running Dialyzer have been modified.
Own Id: OTP-9337

Kernel 2.14.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

os:find_executable/{1,2} will no longer return the path of a directory that happens to be in the PATH.
Own Id: OTP-8983 Aux Id: seq11749
Fix -spec for file:write_file/3
Change type for second parameter from binary() to iodata(), since the function explicitly takes steps to accept lists as well as binaries. (thanks to Magnus Henoch).
Own Id: OTP-9067
Sanitize the specs of the code module
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.
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.
Some cleanups were applied to erl_bif_types too.
Own Id: OTP-9100
- Add spec for function that does not return - Strengthen spec - Introduce types to avoid duplication in specs - Add specs for functions that do not return - Add specs for behaviour callbacks - Simplify two specs
Own Id: OTP-9127

Kernel 2.14.2

Improvements and New Features

The Erlang VM now supports Unicode filenames. The feature is turned on by default on systems where Unicode filenames are mandatory (Windows and MacOSX), but can be enabled on other systems with the '+fnu' emulator option. Enabling the Unicode filename feature on systems where it is not default is however considered experimental and not to be used for production. Together with the Unicode file name support, the concept of "raw filenames" is introduced, which means filenames provided without implicit unicode encoding translation. Raw filenames are provided as binaries, not lists. For further information, see stdlib users guide and the chapter about using Unicode in Erlang. Also see the file module manual page.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-8887
There is now a new function inet:getifaddrs/0 modeled after C library function getifaddrs() on BSD and LInux that reports existing interfaces and their addresses on the host. This replaces the undocumented and unsupported inet:getiflist/0 and inet:ifget/2.
Own Id: OTP-8926

Kernel 2.14.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

In embedded mode, on_load handlers that called code:priv_dir/1 or other functions in code would hang the system. Since the crypto application now contains an on_loader handler that calls code:priv_dir/1, including the crypto application in the boot file would prevent the system from starting.
Also extended the -init_debug option to print information about on_load handlers being run to facilitate debugging.
Own Id: OTP-8902 Aux Id: seq11703

Kernel 2.14.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed: inet:setopts(S, [{linger,{true,2}}]) returned {error,einval} for SCTP sockets. The inet_drv had a bug when checking the option size.
Own Id: OTP-8726 Aux Id: seq11617
gen_udp:connect/3 was broken for SCTP enabled builds. It did not detect remote end errors as it should.
Own Id: OTP-8729
reference() has been substituted for ref() in the documentation.
Own Id: OTP-8733
A bug introduced in kernel-2.13.5.3 has been fixed. If running net_kernel:set_net_ticktime/1 twice within the TransitionPerod the second call caused the net_kernel process to crash with a badmatch.
Own Id: OTP-8787 Aux Id: seq11657, OTP-8643
inet:getsockopt for SCTP sctp_default_send_param had a bug to not initialize required feilds causing random answers. It is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-8795 Aux Id: seq11655
For a socket in the HTTP packet mode, the return value from gen_tcp:recv/2,3 if there is an error in the header will be {ok,{http_error,String}} instead of {error,{http_error,String}} to be consistent with ssl:recv/2,3.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-8831

Improvements and New Features

Even when configuring erlang with --enable-native-libs, the native code for modules loaded very early (such as lists) would not get loaded. This has been corrected. (Thanks to Paul Guyot.)
Own Id: OTP-8750
The undocumented function inet:ifget/2 has been improved to return interface hardware address (MAC) on platforms supporting getaddrinfo() (such as BSD unixes). Note it still does not work on all platforms for example not Windows nor Solaris, so the function is still undocumented.
Buffer overflow and field init bugs for inet:ifget/2 and inet:getservbyname/2 has also been fixed.
Thanks to Michael Santos.
Own Id: OTP-8816
As a usability improvement the 'inet6' option to functions gen_tcp:listen/2, gen_tcp:connect/3-4, gen_udp:open/2 and gen_sctp:open/1-2 is now implicit if the address argument or the 'ip' option contain an IPv6 address (8-tuple).
Own Id: OTP-8822

Kernel 2.14

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

os:find_executable can now be fed with the complete name of the executable on Windows and still find it. I.e os:find_executable("werl.exe") will work as os:find_executable("werl").
Own Id: OTP-3626
The shell's line editing has been improved to more resemble the behaviour of readline and other shells. (Thanks to Dave Peticolas)
Own Id: OTP-8635
Under certain circumstances the net kernel could hang. (Thanks to Scott Lystig Fritchie.)
Own Id: OTP-8643 Aux Id: seq11584
The kernel DNS resolver was leaking one or two ports if the DNS reply could not be parsed or if the resolver(s) caused noconnection type errors. Bug now fixed. A DNS specification borderline truncated reply triggering the port leakage bug has also been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-8652

Improvements and New Features

As of this version, the global name server no longer supports nodes running Erlang/OTP R11B.
Own Id: OTP-8527
The file module's functions write,read and read_line now handles named io_servers like 'standard_io' and 'standard_error' correctly.
Own Id: OTP-8611
The functions file:advise/4 and file:datasync/1 have been added. (Thanks to Filipe David Manana.)
Own Id: OTP-8637
When exchanging groups between nodes pg2 did not remove duplicated members. This bug was introduced in R13B03 (kernel-2.13.4).
Own Id: OTP-8653
There is a new option 'exclusive' to file:open/2 that uses the OS O_EXCL flag where supported to open the file in exclusive mode.
Own Id: OTP-8670

Kernel 2.13.5.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug introduced in Kernel 2.13.5.2 has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-8686 Aux Id: OTP-8643

Kernel 2.13.5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Under certain circumstances the net kernel could hang. (Thanks to Scott Lystig Fritchie.)
Own Id: OTP-8643 Aux Id: seq11584

Kernel 2.13.5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A race condition in os:cmd/1 could cause the caller to get stuck in os:cmd/1 forever.
Own Id: OTP-8502

Kernel 2.13.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A race bug affecting pg2:get_local_members/1 has been fixed. The bug was introduced in R13B03.
Own Id: OTP-8358
The loading of native code was not properly atomic in the SMP emulator, which could cause crashes. Also a per-MFA information table for the native code has now been protected with a lock since it turns that it could be accessed concurrently in the SMP emulator. (Thanks to Mikael Pettersson.)
Own Id: OTP-8397
user.erl (used in oldshell) is updated to handle unicode in prompt strings (io:get_line/{1,2}). io_lib is also updated to format prompts with the 't' modifier (i.e. ~ts instead of ~s).
Own Id: OTP-8418 Aux Id: OTP-8393
The resolver routines failed to look up the own node name as hostname, if the OS native resolver was erroneously configured, bug reported by Yogish Baliga, now fixed.
The resolver routines now tries to parse the hostname as an IP string as most OS resolvers do, unless the native resolver is used.
The DNS resolver inet_res and file resolver inet_hosts now do not read OS configuration files until they are needed. Since the native resolver is default, in most cases they are never needed.
The DNS resolver's automatic updating of OS configuration file data (/etc/resolv.conf) now uses the 'domain' keyword as default search domain if there is no 'search' keyword.
Own Id: OTP-8426 Aux Id: OTP-8381

Improvements and New Features

The expected return value for an on_load function has been changed. (See the section about code loading in the Reference manual.)
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-8339
Explicit top directories in archive files are now optional.
For example, if an archive (app-vsn.ez) just contains an app-vsn/ebin/mod.beam file, the file info for the app-vsn and app-vsn/ebin directories are faked using the file info from the archive file as origin. The virtual directories can also be listed. For short, the top directories are virtual if they does not exist.
Own Id: OTP-8387
code:clash/0 now looks inside archives (.ez files). (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz.)
Own Id: OTP-8413
There are new gen_sctp:connect_init/* functions that initiate an SCTP connection without blocking for the result. The result is delivered asynchronously as an sctp_assoc_change event. (Thanks to Simon Cornish.)
Own Id: OTP-8414

Kernel 2.13.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A link in m:pg2 has been fixed. (Thanks to Christophe Romain.)
Own Id: OTP-8198
A ticker process could potentially be blocked indefinitely trying to send a tick to a node not responding. If this happened, the connection would not be brought down as it should.
Own Id: OTP-8218
A bug in pg2 when members who died did not leave process groups has been fixed. (Thanks to Matthew Dempsky.)
Own Id: OTP-8259

Improvements and New Features

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.
Own Id: OTP-8201
The top directory in archive files does not need to have a -vsn suffix anymore. For example if the archive file has the name like mnesia-4.4.7.ez the top directory in the archive can either be named mnesia or mnesia-4.4.7. If the archive file has a name like mnesia.ez the top directory in the archive must be named mnesia as earlier.
Own Id: OTP-8266
The -on_load() directive can be used to run a function when a module is loaded. It is documented in the section about code loading in the Reference Manual.
Own Id: OTP-8295

Kernel 2.13.3

Improvements and New Features

The DNS resolver client inet_res has been rewritten, documented and released. See inet_res(3) and Erts User's Guide: Inet configuration.
It can formally not be incompatible with respect to earlier versions since there was no earlier official version. However it was used before and some details have changed.
Configuration now initializes from /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/hosts on all unix platforms regardless of which distribution mode the node is started in. The directory (/etc) these files are supposed to reside in can be changed via an environment variable. These configuration file locations can also be changed in the inet configuration. The files are monitored for change and re-read, which makes a few resolver configuration variables out of application control. The /etc/hosts entries have now their own cache table that is shadowed (with lookup method 'file' is used) by the application configured host entries. This problem (that inet_res configuration only worked for distribution mode long names) was among other reported by Matthew O'Gorman many moons ago.
The lookup methods are still 'native' only per default. Resolver configuration is done on all Unix platforms just to get a usable configuration for direct calls to inet_res.
The functions inet_res:nslookup/3..5 and inet_res:nnslookup/4..4 are no longer recommended to use, instead use inet_res:lookup/3..5 and inet_res:resolve/3..5 which provide clearer argument types and the possibility to override options in the call.
Users of previous unsupported versions of inet_res have included internal header files to get to the internal record definitions in order to examine DNS replies. This is still unsupported and there are access functions in inet_dns to use instead. These are documented in inet_res(3).
Bug fix: a compression reference loop would make DNS message decoding loop forever. Problem reported by Florian Weimer.
Bug fix and patch suggestion by Sergei Golovan: configuring IPv6 nameservers did not work. His patch (as he warned) created many UDP sockets; one per nameserver. This has been fixed in the released version.
Improvement: inet_res is now EDNS0 capable. The current implementation is simple and does not probe and cache EDNS info for nameservers, which a fully capable implementation probably should do. EDNS has to be enabled via resolver configuration, and if a nameserver replies that it does not support EDNS, inet_res falls back to a regular DNS query.
Improvement: now inet_res automatically falls back to TCP if it gets a truncated answer from a nameserver.
Warning: some of the ancient and exotic record types handled by inet_res and inet_dns are not supported by current versions of BIND, so they could not be tested after the rewrite, with reasonable effort, e.g MD, MF, NULL, and SPF. The risk for bugs in these particular records is still low since their code is mostly shared with other tested record types.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-7955 Aux Id: OTP-7107 OTP-6852
A TCP socket with option {packet,4} could crash the emulator if it received a packet header with a very large size value (>2Gb). The same bug caused erlang:decode_packet/3 to return faulty values. (Thanks to Georgos Seganos.)
Own Id: OTP-8102
The file module has now a read_line/1 function similar to the io:get_line/2, but with byte oriented semantics. The function file:read_line/1 works for raw files as well, but for good performance it is recommended to use it together with the 'read_ahead' option for raw file access.
Own Id: OTP-8108

Kernel 2.13.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug when doing io:get_line (among other calls) from a file opened with encoding other than latin1, causing false unicode errors to occur, is now corrected.
Own Id: OTP-7974

Improvements and New Features

Added functionality to get higher resolution timestamp from system. The erlang:now function returns a timestamp that's not always consistent with the actual operating system time (due to resilience against large time changes in the operating system). The function os:timestamp/0 is added to get a similar timestamp as the one being returned by erlang:now, but untouched by Erlangs time correcting and smoothing algorithms. The timestamp returned by os:timestamp is always consistent with the operating systems view of time, like the calendar functions for getting wall clock time, but with higher resolution. Example of usage can be found in the os manual page.
Own Id: OTP-7971

Kernel 2.13.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Many concurrent calls to os:cmd/1 will only block one scheduler thread at a time, making an smp emulator more responsive if the OS is slow forking processes.
Own Id: OTP-7890 Aux Id: seq11219
Fixed hanging early RPC that did IO operation during node start.
Own Id: OTP-7903 Aux Id: seq11224
The error behavior of gen_tcp and gen_udp has been corrected. gen_tcp:connect/3,4 and gen_udp:send/4 now returns {error,eafnosupport} for conflicting destination address versus socket address family. Other corner cases for IP address string host names combined with not using the native (OS) resolver (which is not default) has also been changed to return {error,nxdomain} instead of {error,einval}. Those changes just may surprise old existing code. gen_tcp:listen/2 and gen_udp:open/2 now fails for conflicting local address versus socket address family instead of trying to use an erroneous address. Problem reported by Per Hedeland.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-7929

Improvements and New Features

Several glitches and performance issues in the Unicode and I/O-system implementation of R13A have been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-7896 Aux Id: OTP-7648 OTP-7887
The unsupported DNS resolver client inet_res has now been improved to handle NAPTR queries.
Own Id: OTP-7925 Aux Id: seq11231

Kernel 2.13

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The old Erlang DNS resolver inet_res has been corrected to handle TXT records with more than one character string. Patch courtesy of Geoff Cant.
Own Id: OTP-7588
When chunk reading a disk log opened in read_only mode, bad terms could crash the disk log process.
Own Id: OTP-7641 Aux Id: seq11090
gen_tcp:send() did sometimes (only observed on Solaris) return {error,enotconn} instead of the expected {error,closed} as the peer socket had been explicitly closed.
Own Id: OTP-7647
The gen_sctp option sctp_peer_addr_params, #sctp_paddrparams{address={IP,Port} was erroneously decoded in the inet driver. This bug has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-7755

Improvements and New Features

Erlang programs can now access STDERR on platforms where such a file descriptor is available by using the io_server 'standard_error', i.e. io:format(standard_error,"~s~n",[ErrorMessage]),
Own Id: OTP-6688
The format of the string returned by erlang:system_info(system_version) (as well as the first message when Erlang is started) has changed. The string now contains the both the OTP version number as well as the erts version number.
Own Id: OTP-7649
As of this version, the global name server no longer supports nodes running Erlang/OTP R10B.
Own Id: OTP-7661
A {nodedown, Node} message passed by the net_kernel:monitor_nodes/X functionality is now guaranteed to be sent after Node has been removed from the result returned by erlang:nodes/Y.
Own Id: OTP-7725
The deprecated functions erlang:fault/1, erlang:fault/2, and file:rawopen/2 have been removed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-7812
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.
Own Id: OTP-7826
The copyright notices have been updated.
Own Id: OTP-7851

Kernel 2.12.5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When chunk reading a disk log opened in read_only mode, bad terms could crash the disk log process.
Own Id: OTP-7641 Aux Id: seq11090
Calling gen_tcp:send() from several processes on socket with option send_timeout could lead to much longer timeout than specified. The solution is a new socket option {send_timeout_close,true} that will do automatic close on timeout. Subsequent calls to send will then immediately fail due to the closed connection.
Own Id: OTP-7731 Aux Id: seq11161

Kernel 2.12.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The documentation of rpc:pmap/3 has been corrected. (Thanks to Kirill Zaborski.)
Own Id: OTP-7537
The listen socket used for the distributed Erlang protocol now uses the socket option 'reuseaddr', which is useful when you force the listen port number using kernel options 'inet_dist_listen_min' and 'inet_dist_listen_max' and restarts a node with open connections.
Own Id: OTP-7563
Fixed memory leak of unclosed TCP-ports. A gen_tcp:send() followed by a failing gen_tcp:recv() could in some cases cause the port to linger after being closed.
Own Id: OTP-7615

Improvements and New Features

Processes spawned using proc_lib (including gen_server and other library modules that use proc_lib) no longer keep the entire argument list for the initial call, but only the arity.
Also, if proc_lib:spawn/1 is used to spawn a fun, the actual fun is not kept, but only module, function name, and arity of the function that implements the fun.
The reason for the change is that keeping the initial fun (or a fun in an argument list), would prevent upgrading the code for the module. A secondary reason is that keeping the fun and function arguments could waste a significant amount of memory.
The drawback with the change is that the crash reports will provide less precise information about the initial call (only Module:Function/Arity instead of Module:Function(Arguments)). The function proc_lib:initial_call/1 still returns a list, but each argument has been replaced with a dummy atom.
Own Id: OTP-7531 Aux Id: seq11036
io:get_line/1 when reading from standard input is now substantially faster. There are also some minor performance improvements in io:get_line/1 when reading from any file opened in binary mode. (Thanks to Fredrik Svahn.)
Own Id: OTP-7542
There is now experimental support for loading of code from archive files. See the documentation of code, init, erl_prim_loaderand escript for more info.
The error handling of escripts has been improved.
An escript may now set explicit arguments to the emulator, such as -smp enabled.
An escript may now contain a precompiled beam file.
An escript may now contain an archive file containing one or more applications (experimental).
The internal module code_aux has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-7548 Aux Id: otp-6622
code:is_sticky/1 is now documented. (Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu.)
Own Id: OTP-7561
In the job control mode, the "s" and "r" commands now take an optional argument to specify which shell to start. (Thanks to Robert Virding.)
Own Id: OTP-7617
net_adm:world/0,1 could crash if called in an emulator that has not been started with either the -sname or -name option; now it will return an empty list. (Thanks to Edwin Fine.)
Own Id: OTP-7618

Kernel 2.12.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Large files are now handled on Windows, where the filesystem supports it.
Own Id: OTP-7410

Improvements and New Features

New BIF erlang:decode_packet/3 that extracts a protocol packet from a binary. Similar to the socket option {packet, Type}. Also documented the socket packet type http and made it official. NOTE: The tuple format for http packets sent from an active socket has been changed in an incompatible way.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-7404
Setting the {active,once} for a socket (using inets:setopts/2) is now specially optimized (because the {active,once} option is typically used much more frequently than other options).
Own Id: OTP-7520

Kernel 2.12.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

SCTP_ADDR_CONFIRMED events are now handled by gen_sctp.
Own Id: OTP-7276
When leaving a process group with pg2:leave/2 the process was falsely assumed to be a member of the group. This bug has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-7277
In the Erlang shell, using up and down arrow keys, the wrong previous command could sometimes be retrieved.
Own Id: OTP-7278
The documentation for erlang:trace/3 has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-7279 Aux Id: seq10927
In the SMP emulator, there was small risk that code:purge(Mod) would kill a process that was running code in Mod and unload the module Mod before the process had terminated. code:purge(Mod) now waits for confirmation (using erlang:monitor/2) that the process has been killed before proceeding.
Own Id: OTP-7282
zlib:inflate failed when the size of the inflated data was an exact multiple of the internal buffer size (4000 bytes by default).
Own Id: OTP-7359

Improvements and New Features

Additional library directories can now be specified in the environment variable ERL_LIBS. See the manual page for the code module. (Thanks to Serge Aleynikov.)
Own Id: OTP-6940
crypto and zlib drivers improved to allow concurrent smp access.
Own Id: OTP-7262
There is a new function init:stop/1 which can be used to shutdown the system cleanly AND generate a non-zero exit status or crash dump. (Thanks to Magnus Froberg.)
Own Id: OTP-7308
The hide option for open_port/2 is now documented. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson.)
Own Id: OTP-7358

Kernel 2.12.2.1

Improvements and New Features

os:cmd/1 on unix platforms now use /bin/sh as shell instead of looking for sh in the PATH environment.
Own Id: OTP-7283

Kernel 2.12.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug caused by a race condition involving disk_log and pg2 has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-7209 Aux Id: seq10890
The beta testing module gen_sctp now supports active mode as stated in the documentation. Active mode is still rather untested, and there are some issues about what should be the right semantics for gen_sctp:connect/5. In particular: should it be blocking or non-blocking or choosable. There is a high probability it will change semantics in a (near) future patch.
Try it, give comments and send in bug reports!
Own Id: OTP-7225

Improvements and New Features

erlang:system_info/1 now accepts the logical_processors, and debug_compiled arguments. For more info see the, erlang documentation.
The scale factor returned by test_server:timetrap_scale_factor/0 is now also effected if the emulator uses a larger amount of scheduler threads than the amount of logical processors on the system.
Own Id: OTP-7175
Updated the documentation for erlang:function_exported/3 and io:format/2 functions to no longer state that those functions are kept mainly for backwards compatibility.
Own Id: OTP-7186
A process executing the processes/0 BIF can now be preempted by other processes during its execution. This in order to disturb the rest of the system as little as possible. The returned result is, of course, still a consistent snapshot of existing processes at a time during the call to processes/0.
The documentation of the processes/0 BIF and the is_process_alive/1 BIF have been updated in order to clarify the difference between an existing process and a process that is alive.
Own Id: OTP-7213
tuple_size/1 and byte_size/1 have been substituted for size/1 in the documentation.
Own Id: OTP-7244

Kernel 2.12.1.2

Improvements and New Features

The {allocator_sizes, Alloc} and alloc_util_allocators arguments are now accepted by erlang:system_info/1. For more information see the erlang documentation.
Own Id: OTP-7167

Kernel 2.12.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a problem in group that could cause the ssh server to lose answers or hang.
Own Id: OTP-7185 Aux Id: seq10871

Kernel 2.12.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

file:read/2 and file:consult_stream/1,3 did not use an empty prompt on I/O devices. This bug has now been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-7013
The sctp driver has been updated to work against newer lksctp packages e.g 1.0.7 that uses the API spelling change adaption -> adaptation. Older lksctp (1.0.6) still work. The erlang API in gen_sctp.erl and inet_sctp.hrl now spells 'adaptation' regardless of the underlying C API.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-7120

Improvements and New Features

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 p of the io_lib module.
Superfluous empty lines have been removed from code examples and from Erlang shell examples.
Own Id: OTP-6944 Aux Id: OTP-6554, OTP-6911
tuple_size/1 and byte_size/1 have been substituted for size/1.
Own Id: OTP-7009

Kernel 2.12

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug for raw files when reading 0 bytes returning 'eof' instead of empty data has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-6291 Aux Id: OTP-6967
A bug in gen_udp:fdopen reported by David Baird and also found by Dialyzer has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-6836 Aux Id: OTP-6594
Calling error_logger:tty(true) multiple times does not give multiple error log printouts.
Own Id: OTP-6884 Aux Id: seq10767
The global name server now ignores nodeup messages when the command line flag -connect_all false has been used. (Thanks to Trevor Woollacott.)
Own Id: OTP-6931
file:write_file/3, file:write/2 and file:read/2 could crash (contrary to documentation) for odd enough file system problems, e.g write to full file system. This bug has now been corrected.
In this process the file module has been rewritten to produce better error codes. Posix error codes now originate from the OS file system calls or are generated only for very similar causes (for example 'enomem' is generated if a memory allocation fails, and 'einval' is generated if the file handle in Erlang is a file handle but currently invalid).
More Erlang-ish error codes are now generated. For example {error,badarg} is now returned from file:close/1 if the argument is not of a file handle type. See file(3).
The possibility to write a single byte using file:write/2 instead of a list or binary of one byte, contradictory to the documentation, has been removed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6967 Aux Id: OTP-6597 OTP-6291
Monitor messages produced by the system monitor functionality, and garbage collect trace messages could contain erroneous heap and/or stack sizes when the actual heaps and/or stacks were huge.
As of erts version 5.6 the large_heap option to erlang:system_monitor/[1,2] has been modified. The monitor message is sent if the sum of the sizes of all memory blocks allocated for all heap generations is equal to or larger than the specified size. Previously the monitor message was sent if the memory block allocated for the youngest generation was equal to or larger than the specified size.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6974 Aux Id: seq10796
inet:getopts/2 returned random values on Windows Vista.
Own Id: OTP-7003

Improvements and New Features

Minor documentation corrections for file:pread/2 and file:pread/3.
Own Id: OTP-6853
The deprecated functions file:file_info/1, init:get_flag/1, init:get_flags/0, and init:get_args/0 have been removed.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6886
Contract directives for modules in Kernel and STDLIB.
Own Id: OTP-6895
The functions io:columns/0, io:columns/1, io:rows/0 and io:rows/1 are added to allow the user to get information about the terminal geometry. The shell takes some advantage of this when formatting output. For regular files and other io-devices where height and width are not applicable, the functions return {error,enotsup}.
Potential incompatibility: If one has written a custom io-handler, the handler has to either return an error or take care of io-requests regarding terminal height and width. Usually that is no problem as io-handlers, as a rule of thumb, should give an error reply when receiving unknown io-requests, instead of crashing.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6933
The undocumented and unsupported functions inet:ip_to_bytes/1, inet:ip4_to_bytes/1, inet:ip6_to_bytes/1, and inet:bytes_to_ip6/16 have been removed.
Own Id: OTP-6938
Added new checksum combine functions to zlib. And fixed a bug in zlib:deflate. Thanks Matthew Dempsky.
Own Id: OTP-6970
The spawn_monitor/1 and spawn_monitor/3 BIFs are now auto-imported (i.e. they no longer need an erlang: prefix).
Own Id: OTP-6975
All functions in the code module now fail with an exception if they are called with obviously bad arguments, such as a tuple when an atom was expected. Some functions now also fail for undocumented argument types (for instance, ensure_loaded/1 now only accepts an atom as documented; it used to accept a string too).
Dialyzer will generally emit warnings for any calls that use undocumented argument types. Even if the call happens to still work in R12B, you should correct your code. A future release will adhere to the documentation.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6983

Kernel 2.11.5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The kernel parameter dist_auto_connect once could fail to block a node if massive parallel sends were issued during a transient failure of network communication
Own Id: OTP-6893 Aux Id: seq10753

Kernel 2.11.5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The internal (rarely used) DNS resolver has been modified to not use the domain search list when asked to resolve an absolute name; a name with a terminating dot. There was also a bug causing it to create malformed DNS queries for absolute names that has been corrected, correction suggested by Scott Lystig Fritchie. The code has also been corrected to look up cached RRs in the same search order as non-cached, now allows having the root domain among the search domains, and can now actually do a zone transfer request.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6806 Aux Id: seq10714 EABln35459
zlib:close/1 would leave an EXIT message in the message queue if the calling process had the trap_exit flag enabled.
Own Id: OTP-6811

Improvements and New Features

The documentation of process_flag(priority, Level) has been updated, see the erlang documentation.
Own Id: OTP-6745 Aux Id: OTP-6715

Kernel 2.11.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The shell has been updated to fix the following flaws: Shell process exit left you with an unresponsive initial shell if not using oldshell. Starting a restricted shell with a nonexisting callback module resulted in a shell where no commands could be used, not even init:stop/0. Fun's could not be used as parameters to local shell functions (in shell_default or user_default) when restricted_shell was active.
Own Id: OTP-6537
The undocumented feature gen_tcp:fdopen/2 was broken in R11B-4. It is now fixed again.
Own Id: OTP-6615
Corrected cancellation of timers in three places in the inet_res module. (Problem found by Dialyzer.)
Own Id: OTP-6676

Improvements and New Features

Corrected protocol layer flue for socket options SO_LINGER, SO_SNDBUF and SO_RCVBUF, for SCTP.
Own Id: OTP-6625 Aux Id: OTP-6336
The behaviour of the inet option {active,once} on peer close is improved and documented.
Own Id: OTP-6681
The inet option send_timeout for connection oriented sockets is added to allow for timeouts in communicating send requests to the underlying TCP stack.
Own Id: OTP-6684 Aux Id: seq10637 OTP-6681
Minor Makefile changes.
Own Id: OTP-6689 Aux Id: OTP-6742
The documentation of process_flag(priority, Level) has been updated, see the erlang documentation.
Own Id: OTP-6715

Kernel 2.11.4.2

Improvements and New Features

process_flag/2 accepts the new flag sensitive.
Own Id: OTP-6592 Aux Id: seq10555

Kernel 2.11.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug in gen_udp:open that broke the 'fd' option has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-6594 Aux Id: seq10619

Kernel 2.11.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Added a warning to the documentation for the error_logger functions error_msg/1,2, warning_msg/1,2 and info_msg/1,2 that calling these function with bad arguments can crash the standard event handler.
Own Id: OTP-4575 Aux Id: seq7693
A bug in inet_db concerning getting the resolver option retry has been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-6380 Aux Id: seq10534
Names registered by calling global:register_name() or global:re_register_name() were not always unregistered when the registering or registered process died. This bug has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-6428
When setting the kernel configuration parameter error_logger to false, the documentation stated that "No error logger handler is installed". This is true, but error logging is not turned off, as the initial, primitive error logger event handler is kept, printing raw event messages to tty.
Changing this behavior can be viewed as a backward incompatible change. Instead a new value silent for the configuration parameter has been added, which ensures that error logging is completely turned off.
Own Id: OTP-6445
Clarified the documentation for code:lib_dir/1 and code:priv_dir/1. The functions traverse the names of the code path, they do not search the actual directories.
Own Id: OTP-6466
io:setopts returned {error,badarg}, when called with only an expand_fun argument. (Thanks to igwan.)
Own Id: OTP-6508

Improvements and New Features

An interface towards the SCTP Socket API Extensions has been implemented.It is an Open Source patch courtesy of Serge Aleynikov and Leonid Timochouk. The Erlang code parts has been adapted by the OTP team, changing the Erlang API somewhat.
The Erlang interface consists of the module gen_sctp and an include file -include_lib("kernel/include/inet_sctp.hrl"). for option record definitions. The gen_sctp module is documented.
The delivered Open Source patch, before the OTP team rewrites, was written according to http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tsvwg-sctpsocket-13 and was claimed to work fine, tested on Linux Fedora Core 5.0 (kernel 2.6.15-2054 or later) and on Solaris 10 and 11. The OTP team rewrites used the same standard document but might have accidentally broken some functionality. If so, it will soon be patched to working state. The tricky parts in C and the general design has essentially not changed. During the rewrites the code was hand tested on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, and briefly on Solaris 10. Feedbach on code and docs is very much appreciated.
The SCTP interface is in beta state. It has only been hand tested and has no automatic test suites in OTP meaning everything is most certainly not tested. Socket active mode is broken. IPv6 is not tested. The documentation has been reworked due to the API changes, but has not been proofread after this.
Thank you from the OTP team to Serge Aleynikov and Leonid Timochouk for a valuable contribution. We hope we have not messed it up too much.
Own Id: OTP-6336
A {minor_version,Version} option is now recognized by term_to_binary/2. {minor_version,1} will cause floats to be encoded in an exact and more space-efficient way compared to the previous encoding.
Own Id: OTP-6434
Monitoring of nodes has been improved. Now the following properties apply to net_kernel:monitor_nodes/[1,2]:
- nodeup messages will be delivered before delivery of any message from the remote node passed through the newly established connection.
- nodedown messages will not be delivered until all messages from the remote node that have been passed through the connection have been delivered.
- Subscriptions can also be made before the net_kernel server has been started.
Own Id: OTP-6481
Setting and getting socket options in a "raw" fashion is now allowed. Using this feature will inevitably produce non portable code, but will allow setting ang getting arbitrary uncommon options on TCP stacks that do have them.
Own Id: OTP-6519
Dialyzer warnings have been eliminated.
Own Id: OTP-6523
The documentation for file:delete/1 and file:set_cwd/1 has been updated to clarify what happens if the input arguments are of an incorrect type.
Own Id: OTP-6535

Kernel 2.11.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

An erroneous packet size could be used for the first messages passed through a newly established connection between two Erlang nodes. This could cause messages to be discarded, or termination of the connection.
Own Id: OTP-6473

Kernel 2.11.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

On Unix, the unix:cmd/1 function could leave an 'EXIT' message in the message queue for the calling process That problem was more likely to happen in an SMP emulator.
Own Id: OTP-6368

Improvements and New Features

More interfaces are added in erl_ddll, to support different usage scenarios.
Own Id: OTP-6307 Aux Id: OTP-6234
Locks set by calling global:set_lock() were not always deleted when the locking process died. This bug has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-6341 Aux Id: seq10445

Kernel 2.11.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Behavior in case of disappeared nodes when using he dist_auto_connect once got changed in R11B-1. The timeouts regarding normal distributed operations is now reverted to the old (pre R11B-1).
Own Id: OTP-6258 Aux Id: OTP-6200, seq10449
Start-up problems for the internal process used by the inet:gethostbyname() functions were eliminated. If the internal process (inet_gethost_native) had not previously been started, and if several processes at the same time called one of the inet:gethostbyname() functions, the calls could fail.
Own Id: OTP-6286

Improvements and New Features

Code cleanup: the old internal obsolete file_server has been removed. It was only used when communicating with R7 and older nodes.
Own Id: OTP-6245
Trying to open a non-existent or badly formed disk log no longer results in a crash report. In particular, ets:file2tab/1 reports no error when the argument is not a well-formed disk log file. (The return value has not been changed, it is still an error tuple.)
Own Id: OTP-6278 Aux Id: seq10421
There are new BIFs erlang:spawn_monitor/1,3, and the new option monitor for spawn_opt/2,3,4,5.
The observer_backend module has been updated to handle the new BIFs.
Own Id: OTP-6281
To help Dialyzer find more bugs, many functions in the Kernel and STDLIB applications now only accept arguments of the type that is documented.
For instance, the functions lists:prefix/2 and lists:suffix/2 are documented to only accept lists as their arguments, but they actually accepted anything and returned false. That has been changed so that the functions cause an exception if one or both arguments are not lists.
Also, the string:strip/3 function is documented to take a character argument that is a character to strip from one or both ends of the string. Given a list instead of a character, it used to do nothing, but will now cause an exception.
Dialyzer will find most cases where those functions are passed arguments of the wrong type.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-6295

Kernel 2.11.1.1

Improvements and New Features

There is now an option read_packets for UDP sockets that sets the maximum number of UDP packets that will be read for each invocation of the socket driver.
Own Id: OTP-6249 Aux Id: seq10452

Kernel 2.11.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

In R11B-0, the erl_ddll server process is always started. Despite that, the configuration parameter start_ddll for the Kernel application was still obeyed, which would cause the erl_ddll server to be started TWICE (and the system shutting down as a result). In this release, start_ddll is no longer used and its documentation has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-6163
The kernel option {dist_auto_connect,once} could block out nodes that had never been connected, causing persistent partitioning of networks. Furthermore, partial restarts of networks could cause inconsistent global name databases. Both problems are now solved.
Own Id: OTP-6200 Aux Id: seq10377

Improvements and New Features

Late arriving tcp_closed and udp_closed messages are now removed from the message queue of a process calling gen_tcp:close/1, gen_udp:close/1, and inet:close/1.
Own Id: OTP-6197

Kernel 2.11

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When repairing a disk log with a corrupt index file (caused by for instance a hard disk failure) the old contents of the index file is kept unmodified. This will make repeated attempts to open the disk log fail every time.
Own Id: OTP-5558 Aux Id: seq9823
Previously unlink/1 and erlang:demonitor/2 behaved completely asynchronous. This had one undesirable effect, though. You could never know when you were guaranteed not to be affected by a link that you had unlinked or a monitor that you had demonitored.
The new behavior of unlink/1 and erlang:demonitor/2 can be viewed as two operations performed atomically. Asynchronously send an unlink signal or a demonitor signal, and ignore any future results of the link or monitor.
NOTE: This change can cause some obscure code to fail which previously did not. For example, the following code might hang:
```
            Mon = erlang:monitor(process, Pid),
            %% ...
            exit(Pid, bang),
            erlang:demonitor(Mon),
            receive
                {'DOWN', Mon, process, Pid, _} -> ok
            %% We were previously guaranteed to get a down message
            %% (since we exited the process ourself), so we could
            %% in this case leave out:
            %% after 0 -> ok
            end,
```
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-5772
The behavior when an application fails to start and possibly causes the runtime system to halt has been cleaned up, including fixing some minor bugs.
application_controller should now always terminate with a non-nested string, meaning the slogan in an erl_crash.dump should always be easy to read.
init now makes sure that the slogan passed to erlang:halt/1 does not exceed the maximum allowed length.
Redundant calls to list_to_atom/1 has been removed from the primitive error_logger event handler. (Thanks Serge Aleynikov for pointing this out).
The changes only affects the contents of the error messages and crashdump file slogan.
Own Id: OTP-5964
The erl_ddll server is now started when OTP is started and placed under the Kernel supervisor. This fixes several minor issues. It used to be started on demand.
The documentation for the start and stop functions in the erl_ddll module has been removed, as those functions are not meant to be used by other applications.
Furthermore, the erl_ddll:stop/1 function no longer terminates the erl_ddll server, as that would terminate the entire runtime system.
Own Id: OTP-6033

Improvements and New Features

Removed some unused functions from application_master.
Own Id: OTP-3889
Global no longer allows the registration of a process under more than one name. If the old (buggy) behavior is desired the Kernel application variable global_multi_name_action can be given the value allow.
Own Id: OTP-5640 Aux Id: OTP-5603
The (slightly misleading) warnings that was shown when the erlang.erl file was compiled has been eliminated.
Own Id: OTP-5947
The auth module API is deprecated.
Own Id: OTP-6037
Added erlang:demonitor/2, making it possible to at the same time flush a received 'DOWN' message, if there is one. See erlang.
Own Id: OTP-6100 Aux Id: OTP-5772

Kernel 2.10.13

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Large files (more than 2 GBytes) are now handled on Solaris 8.
Own Id: OTP-5849 Aux Id: seq10157
During startup, a garbage {'DOWN', ...} message was left by inet_gethost_native, that caused problems for the starting code server.
Own Id: OTP-5978 Aux Id: OTP-5974

Improvements and New Features

global now makes several attempts to connect nodes when maintaining the fully connected network. More than one attempt is sometimes needed under very heavy load.
Own Id: OTP-5889
erl_epmd now explicitly sets the timeout to infinity when calling gen_server:call. The old timeout of 15 seconds could time out under very heavy load.
Own Id: OTP-5959
Corrected the start of code server to use reference-tagged tuples to ensure that an unexpected message sent to the parent process does not cause a halt of the system. Also removed the useless start/* functions in both code.erl and code_server.erl and no longer exports the init function from code_server.erl.
Own Id: OTP-5974 Aux Id: seq10243, OTP-5978

Kernel 2.10.12

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug in global has been fixed: the locker process added nonode@nohost to the list of nodes to lock. This could happen before any nodes got known to the global name server. Depending on net configuration the symptom was a delay.
Own Id: OTP-5792 Aux Id: OTP-5563
If an .app file is missing, the error reason returned by application:load/1 has been corrected to {"no such file or directory", "FILE.app"}, instead of the less informative {"unknown POSIX error","FILE.app"}.
Own Id: OTP-5809
Bug fixes: disk_log:accessible_logs/0 no longer reports all pg2 process groups as distributed disk logs; disk_log:pid2name/1 did not recognize processes of distributed disk logs.
Own Id: OTP-5810
The functions file:consult/1, file:path_consult/2, file:eval/1,2, file:path_eval/2,3, file:script/1,2, file:path_script/2,3 now return correct line numbers in error tuples.
Own Id: OTP-5814
If there were user-defined variables in the boot script, and their values were not provided using the -boot_var option, the emulator would refuse to start with a confusing error message. Corrected to show a clear, understandable message.
The prim_file module was modified to not depend on the lists module, to make it possible to start the emulator using a user-defined loader. (Thanks to Martin Bjorklund.)
Own Id: OTP-5828 Aux Id: seq10151
Minor corrections in the description of open modes. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson.)
Own Id: OTP-5856

Improvements and New Features

application_controller now terminates with the actual error reason, instead of shutdown. This means that the crash dump now should be somewhat more informative, in the case where the runtime system is terminated due to an error in an application.
Example: If the (permanent) application app1 fails to start, the slogan now will be: "Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) ({application_start_failure,app1,{shutdown, {app1,start,[normal,[]]}}})"
rather than the previous "Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) (shutdown)".
Own Id: OTP-5811

Kernel 2.10.11.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Timers could sometimes timeout too early. This bug has now been fixed.
Automatic cancellation of timers created by erlang:send_after(Time, pid(), Msg), and erlang:start_timer(Time, pid(), Msg) has been introduced. Timers created with the receiver specified by a pid, will automatically be cancelled when the receiver exits. For more information see the erlang man page.
In order to be able to maintain a larger amount of timers without increasing the maintenance cost, the internal timer wheel and bif timer table have been enlarged.
Also a number of minor bif timer optimizations have been implemented.
Own Id: OTP-5795 Aux Id: OTP-5090, seq8913, seq10139, OTP-5782

Improvements and New Features

Documentation improvements:
- documentation for erlang:link/1 corrected
- command line flag -code_path_cache added
- erl command line flags clarifications
- net_kernel clarifications
Own Id: OTP-5847

Kernel 2.10.11

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Several bug fixes and improvements in the global name registration facility (see global):
- the name resolving procedure did not always unlink no longer registered processes;
- the global name could sometimes hang when a nodedown was immediately followed by a nodeup;
- global names were not always unregistered when a node went down;
- it is now possible to set and delete locks at the same time as the global name server is resolving names--the handling of global locks has been separated from registration of global names;
As of this version, global no longer supports nodes running Erlang/OTP R7B or earlier.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-5563
The functions global:set_lock/3 and global:trans/4 now accept the value 0 (zero) of the Retries argument.
Own Id: OTP-5737
The inet:getaddr(Addr, Family) no longer validates the Addr argument if it is a 4 or 8 tuple containing the IP address, except for the size of the tuple and that it contains integers in the correct range.
The reason for the change is that validation could cause the following sequence of calls to fail:
{ok,Addr} = inet:getaddr(localhost, inet6), gen_tcp:connect(Addr, 7, [inet6])
Own Id: OTP-5743

Improvements and New Features

The previously undocumented and UNSUPPORTED zlib module has been updated in an incompatible way and many bugs have been corrected. It is now also documented.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-5715
Added application interface functions which_applications/1, set_env/4 and unset_env/3, which take an additional Timeout argument. To be used in situations where the standard gen_server timeout (5000ms) is not adequate.
Own Id: OTP-5724 Aux Id: seq10083
Improved documentation regarding synchronized start of applications with included applications (using start phases and application_starter).
Own Id: OTP-5754
New socket options priority and tos for platforms that support them (currently only Linux).
Own Id: OTP-5756
The global name server has been optimized when it comes to maintaining a fully connected network.
Own Id: OTP-5770

Kernel 2.10.10.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The native resolver has gotten an control API for extended debugging and soft restart. It is: inet_gethost_native:control(Control)
Control = {debug_level,Level} | soft_restart
Level = integer() in the range 0-4.
Own Id: OTP-5751 Aux Id: EABln25013

Kernel 2.10.10

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

If several processes (at the same node) simultaneously tried to start the same distributed application, this could lead to application:start returning an erroneous value, or even hang.
Own Id: OTP-5606 Aux Id: seq9838

Improvements and New Features

The manual pages for most of the Kernel and some of the STDLIB modules have been updated, in particular regarding type definitions.
The documentation of the return value for erts:info/1 has been corrected.
The documentation for erlang:statistics/1 now lists all possible arguments.
Own Id: OTP-5360
When the native resolver fails a gethostbyaddr lookup, nxdomain should be returned. There should be no attempt to fallback on a routine that succeeds if only the syntax of the IP address is valid. This has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-5598 Aux Id: OTP-5576
Replaced some tuple funs with the new fun M:F/A construct.
The high-order functions in the lists module no longer accept bad funs under any circumstances. 'lists:map(bad_fun, [])' used to return '[]' but now causes an exception.
Unused, broken compatibility code in the ets module was removed. (Thanks to Dialyzer.)
Eliminated 5 discrepancies found by Dialyzer in the Appmon application.
Own Id: OTP-5633
The possibility to have comments following the list of tuples in a config file (file specified with the -config flag) has been added.
Own Id: OTP-5661 Aux Id: seq10003

Kernel 2.10.9

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

'erl -config sys.config' would fail to start if the sys.config file did not contain any whitespace at all after the dot. (Thanks to Anders Nygren.)
Own Id: OTP-5543
A bug regarding tcp sockets which results in hanging gen_tcp:send/2 has been corrected. To encounter this bug you needed one process that read from a socket, one that wrote more date than the reader read out so the sender got suspended, and then the reader closed the socket. (Reported and diagnosed by Alexey Shchepin.)
Corrected a bug in the (undocumented and unsupported) option {packet,http} for gen_tcp. (Thanks to Claes Wikstrom and Luke Gorrie.)
Updated the documentation regarding the second argument to gen_tcp:recv/2, the Length to receive.
Own Id: OTP-5582 Aux Id: seq9839

Improvements and New Features

At startup, the Erlang resolver hosts table was used to look up the name of the local (and possibly stand alone) host. This was incorrect. The configured resolver method is now used for this purpose.
Own Id: OTP-5393
The erlang:port_info/1 BIF is now documented. Minor corrections of the documentation for erlang:port_info/2.
Added a note to the documentation of the math module that all functions are not available on all platforms.
Added more information about the +c option in the erl man page in the ERTS documentation.
Own Id: OTP-5555
The new fun M:F/A construct creates a fun that refers to the latest version of M:F/A. This syntax is meant to replace tuple funs {M,F} which have many problems.
The new type test is_function(Fun,A) (which may be used in guards) test whether Fun is a fun that can be applied with A arguments. (Currently, Fun can also be a tuple fun.)
Own Id: OTP-5584
According to the documentation global implements the equivalent of register/2, which returns badarg if a process is already registered. As it turns out there is no check in global if a process is registered under more than one name. If some process is accidentally or by design given several names, it is possible that the name registry becomes inconsistent due to the way the resolve function is called when name clashes are discovered (see register_name/3 in global).
In OTP R11B global will not allow the registration of a process under more than one name. To help finding code where no will be returned, a Kernel application variable, global_multi_name_action, is hereby introduced. Depending on its value (info, warning, or error), messages are sent to the error logger when global discovers that some process is given more than one name. The variable only affects the node where it is defined.
Own Id: OTP-5603

Kernel 2.10.8

Improvements and New Features

In case of a DNS lookup loop, inet_db:getbyname ends up building an infinite list. This has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-5449
When doing an inet6 name lookup on an IPv4 address it was possible to get an address on IPv4 format back. This has been corrected. Some other minor inconsistencies regarding IPv6 name lookup have also been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-5576

Kernel 2.10.7

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Under certain circumstances the net_kernel could emit spurious nodedown messages. This bug has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-5396
Removed description of the keep_zombies configuration parameter in the kernel man page.
Own Id: OTP-5497

Improvements and New Features

Eliminated Dialyzer warnings (caused by dead code) in the init and prim_file modules.
Own Id: OTP-5496
inet_config now also checks the environment variable ERL_INETRC for a possible user configuration file. See the ERTS User's Guide for details.
Own Id: OTP-5512

Kernel 2.10.6

Improvements and New Features

The c option for the +B flag has been introduced which makes it possible to use Ctrl-C (Ctrl-Break on Windows) to interrupt the shell process rather than to invoke the emulator break handler. All new +B options are also supported on Windows (werl) as of now. Furthermore, Ctrl-C on Windows has now been reserved for copying text (what Ctrl-Ins was used for previously). Ctrl-Break should be used for break handling. Lastly, the documentation of the system flags has been updated.
Own Id: OTP-5388
The possibility to start the Erlang shell in parallel with the rest of the system was reintroduced for backwards compatibility in STDLIB 1.13.1. The flag to be used for this is now called async_shell_start and has been documented. New shells started from the JCL menu are not synchronized with init anymore. This makes it possible to start a new shell (e.g. for debugging purposes) even if the initial shell has not come up.
Own Id: OTP-5406 Aux Id: OTP-5218

Kernel 2.10.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Documentation for erlang:binary_to_float/1 deleted. The BIF itself was removed several releases ago.
Updated documentation for apply/2 and apply/3.
Own Id: OTP-5391

Improvements and New Features

net_kernel:monitor_nodes/2 which takes a flag and an option list has been added. By use of net_kernel:monitor_nodes/2 one can subscribe for nodeup/nodedown messages with extra information. It is now possible to monitor hidden nodes, and get nodedown reason. See the net_kernel documentation for more information.
Own Id: OTP-5374

Kernel 2.10.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The application master for an application now terminates the application faster, which reduces the risk for timeouts in other parts of the system.
Own Id: OTP-5363 Aux Id: EABln19084
A BIF erlang:raise/3 has been added. See the manual for details. It is intended for internal system programming only, advanced error handling.
Own Id: OTP-5376 Aux Id: OTP-5257

Kernel 2.10.3

Improvements and New Features

With the -eval flag (erl -eval Expr), an arbitrary expression can be evaluated during system initialization. This is documented in init.
Own Id: OTP-5260
The unsupported and undocumented modules socks5, socks5_auth, socks5_tcp, and socks5_udp have been removed.
Own Id: OTP-5266

Kernel 2.10.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The Pman 'trace shell' functionality was broken and has now been fixed. Furthermore, Pman could not correctly find the pid of the active shell if more than one shell process was running on the node. This has also been corrected.
Own Id: OTP-5191
The documentation for the auth:open/1 function which no longer exists has been removed. (Thanks to Miguel Barreiro.)
Own Id: OTP-5208
Corrected the crc32/3 function in the undocumented and unsupported zlib module.
Own Id: OTP-5227

Improvements and New Features

You can now start Erlang with the -rsh flag which gives you a remote initial shell instead of a local one. Example:
```
            erl -sname this_node -rsh other_node@other_host
```
Own Id: OTP-5210
If /etc/hosts specified two hosts with the same IP address (on separate lines), only the last host would be registered by inet_db during inet configuration. This has been corrected now so that both aliases are registered with the same IP address.
Own Id: OTP-5212 Aux Id: seq7128
The documentation for BIFs that take I/O lists have been clarified. Those are list_to_binary/1, port_command/2, port_control/3.
Documentation for all is_* BIFs (such as is_atom/1) has been added.
Removed the documentation for erlang:float_to_binary/2 which was removed from the run-time system several releases ago.
Own Id: OTP-5222

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