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Erlang Interface
Release Notes
Version 3.8.1

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- Erl_interface Release Notes
  - Top of chapter
  - Erl_Interface 3.8.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.8
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.20
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.19
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.18
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.17
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.16
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.15
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.14
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.13
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.12
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.11
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.10
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.9
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.8
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.7
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.6
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.5
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.4
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.3
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.2
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.1.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.7.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.7
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.5
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.4
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.3
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.2
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.6.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.6
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.9
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.8
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.7
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.6
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.5.4
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.5.3
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.5.2
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.5.1
  - Erl_Interface 3.5.5
  - Erl_interface 3.5.2
  - Erl_interface 3.5.1
  - Erl_interface 3.5
  - Erl_interface 3.4.5
  - Erl_interface 3.4.4
  - Erl_interface 3.4.2
  - Erl_interface 3.4.1

# 1 Erl_interface Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Erl_interface application.

### 1.1 Erl_Interface 3.8.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Fix the conditional selection of gethostbyname_r and gethostbyaddr_r.

  Own Id: OTP-13188

### 1.2 Erl_Interface 3.8

#### Improvements and New Features

- Do not accept Nan and Infinity values

  Erlang does not accept these values, so we return an error in the C interface rather than letting them through to the Erlang VM, which rejects the message with a somewhat cryptic "bad external term".

  Own Id: OTP-12801

### 1.3 Erl_Interface 3.7.20

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Use C99 function isfinite() instead of finite() when available on non GCC compilers.

  Own Id: OTP-12268

#### Improvements and New Features

- Distribute autoconf helpers to applications at build time instead of having multiple identical copies committed in the repository.

  Own Id: OTP-12348

- Added an .appup file for the application.

  Own Id: OTP-12358 Aux Id: OTP-12178

### 1.4 Erl_Interface 3.7.19

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Added a .app file for the application.

  Own Id: OTP-12178

### 1.5 Erl_Interface 3.7.18

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Implement --enable-sanitizers[=sanitizers]. Similar to debugging with Valgrind, it's very useful to enable -fsanitize= switches to catch bugs at runtime.

  Own Id: OTP-12153

### 1.6 Erl_Interface 3.7.17

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Now works with Visual Studio.

  Own Id: OTP-11984

### 1.7 Erl_Interface 3.7.16

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Fix memcheck warning in gen_challange (Thanks to Olivier Girondel)

  Own Id: OTP-11608

### 1.8 Erl_Interface 3.7.15

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Silence warnings (Thanks to Anthony Ramine)

  Own Id: OTP-11517

### 1.9 Erl_Interface 3.7.14

#### Improvements and New Features

- Introduced functionality for inspection of system and build configuration.

  Own Id: OTP-11196

- Header and library files from ic and erl_interface are now installed into usr/{include,lib}. Note that these directories are unversioned, so the latest installed version will be the one in the directory.

  Own Id: OTP-11284

- Fix location of true binary under Mac OSX. Thanks to Simon Cornish.

  Own Id: OTP-11289

### 1.10 Erl_Interface 3.7.13

#### Improvements and New Features

- A guard was added to check if file descriptor is valid before closing it.

  Own Id: OTP-11167

### 1.11 Erl_Interface 3.7.12

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Superfluous trailing comma in enum erlang_char_encoding causing compile error for g++ with --pedantic option.

  Own Id: OTP-10913 Aux Id: seq12264

### 1.12 Erl_Interface 3.7.11

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Revert the structs erlang_pid, erlang_port and erlang_ref as they were before R16A (without node_org_enc) in order to be backward compatible with user code that accesses the fields of these structs.

  Own Id: OTP-10885 Aux Id: seq12256

### 1.13 Erl_Interface 3.7.10

#### Improvements and New Features

- 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

- Limited support for unicode atoms in the external format and in the internal representation of the vm. This is a preparative feature in order to support communication with future releases of Erlang/OTP that may create unicode atoms.

  Own Id: OTP-10753

### 1.14 Erl_Interface 3.7.9

#### Improvements and New Features

- Teach lib/erl_interface/configure.in to look for pthreads support in libc (where it can be found on QNX)

  A minor tweak such that this configure *fails* if you pass --enable-threads and no pthreads support can be found.

  (Thanks to Per Hedeland)

  Own Id: OTP-10581

### 1.15 Erl_Interface 3.7.8

#### Improvements and New Features

- Detect when middle endian doubles are used by a platform and account for it when decoding floats. (Thanks to Mike Sperber)

  Own Id: OTP-10209

### 1.16 Erl_Interface 3.7.7

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Minor suppressions and fixes of compilation warnings

  Own Id: OTP-10016

### 1.17 Erl_Interface 3.7.6

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- An error when getting global names on OS X Lion has been fixed. The error caused truncated strings to be returned from the function.

  Own Id: OTP-9799

#### Improvements and New Features

- Erlang/OTP can now be built using parallel make if you limit the number of jobs, for instance using 'make -j6' or 'make -j10'. 'make -j' does not work at the moment because of some missing dependencies.

  Own Id: OTP-9451

- Eliminate use of deprecated regexp module

  Own Id: OTP-9810

### 1.18 Erl_Interface 3.7.5

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Align ei buffer according to size of pointers

  Own Id: OTP-9390

- XML files have been corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-9550 Aux Id: OTP-9541

- Make comment and documentation reflect code in erl_interface/src/misc/ei_decode_term.c (Thanks to Anneli Cuss)

  Own Id: OTP-9559

#### Improvements and New Features

- ei: integer overflow in string/atom encoding

  ei_encode_atom() and ei_encode_string() use strlen() to get the length of the buffer. As strlen() returns an unsigned long long and both ei functions take a signed integer, the length fields may overflow.

  Check so that the results of strlen can be held in a signed integer. (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-9530

### 1.19 Erl_Interface 3.7.4

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Fix using sizeof() for array given as function argument

  When using the sizeof() operator for an array given as function argument it returns the size of the pointer. In this case, the affected function hex(char digest[16], char buff[33]) will just print 4 or 8 byte instead of the full length of 16 bytes, on 32bit and 64bit systems respectively. (Thanks to Cristian greco)

  Own Id: OTP-9151

- Initialize to and to_name in erl_receive_msg. (Thanks to Göran Larsson)

  Own Id: OTP-9241

- erl_interface: fix compile error(Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-9252

### 1.20 Erl_Interface 3.7.3

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Some malformed distribution messages could cause VM to crash, this is now corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-8993

- Strengthen string copy check (Thanks to Michael Santos).

  Own Id: OTP-9071

- Strengthen atom length check when decoding atoms (Thanks to Michael Santos).

  Own Id: OTP-9072

#### Improvements and New Features

- Fix global registration. C node needed DFLAG_DIST_MONITOR_FLAT set when connecting. Fix list compare in erl_compare_ext to return correct result. (Thanks to Vitaliy Batichko and Evgeny Khirin)

  Own Id: OTP-9015

### 1.21 Erl_Interface 3.7.2

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- erl_call: remove get_hostent

  get_hostent does not properly handle IPv4 addresses on little endian platforms and fails with hostnames beginning with a number. Remove get_hostent and use ei_gethostbyname directly since gethostbyname supports IPv4 addresses.

  (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8890

- teach ei_x_format to handle unary - and + (Thanks to Steve Vinoski)

  Own Id: OTP-8891

- Fix zero byte allocation in registry. (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8893

- Check the length of the node name to prevent an overflow. Memory error control of ei_alloc_big. (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8943

- erl_term_len() in erl_interface could returned too large values for integers (since R14B) and too small values for refs (since R9B).

  Own Id: OTP-8945

### 1.22 Erl_Interface 3.7.1.1

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The erl_interface tracelevel for erlang messages was incorrect. This has now been fixed.

  Own Id: OTP-8874

### 1.23 Erl_Interface 3.7.1

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Removed unused variable in ei_decode_term.c.

  Fixed faulty deallocation in erl_call.

  Own Id: OTP-8748

- ei_connect: correct man page examples (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8813

- ei: prevent overflow in ei_connect_init and ei_xconnect

  Add length check of the buffer before copying. (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8814

- Remove DECLSPEC feature which fails on Windows Vista and use the fallback implementation instead.

  Own Id: OTP-8826

- erl_call: fix multiple buffer overflows (Thanks to Michael Santos)

  Own Id: OTP-8827

#### Improvements and New Features

- Fix incorrect writev iovec buffer handling in erl_interface (Thanks to Steve Vinoski)

  Own Id: OTP-8837

### 1.24 Erl_Interface 3.7

#### Improvements and New Features

- compact IEEE 754 double encoding in external binary format for ei

  - Implement the compact IEEE 754 double encoding in external binary format for ei. Encoding for ei now always produces the NEW_FLOAT_EXT format. Decoding and term printing handle both the old ERL_FLOAT_EXT encoding and the new NEW_FLOAT_EXT encoding.

  - Legacy erl_interface code also handles the new encoding, but still produces the ERL_FLOAT_EXT encoding by default.

  - Also enable the DFLAG_NEW_FLOATS distribution flag.

  - ei_get_type() will return ERL_FLOAT_EXT regardless if the external format is encoded with ERL_FLOAT_EXT or NEW_FLOAT_EXT for doubles.

  - Reduce the number of copies of the code for encoding and decoding doubles throughout ei and erl_interface by instead calling the ei encoding and decoding functions wherever possible.

  - Restore commented-out float tests in ei_decode_SUITE and ei_encode_SUITE in lib/erl_interface/test. Modify them to make them match the style of other tests in the same suites.

  These changes are based on an ei float patch from Serge Aleynikov originally submitted against R12B-2 in July 2008 and reworked by Steve Vinoski May 2010.

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-8684

### 1.25 Erl_Interface 3.6.5

#### Improvements and New Features

- Document debug support.

  Debug trace output for connection activity could be enabled setting the trace level as an integer to the EI_TRACELEVEL environment variable. This option could also be read and set from a running program using ei_get_tracelevel(void) and ei_set_tracelevel(int).

  Own Id: OTP-5037

- Cross compilation improvements and other build system improvements.

  Most notable:

  - Lots of cross compilation improvements. The old cross compilation support was more or less non-existing as well as broken. Please, note that the cross compilation support should still be considered as experimental. Also note that old cross compilation configurations cannot be used without modifications. For more information on cross compiling Erlang/OTP see the $ERL_TOP/INSTALL-CROSS.md file.
  - Support for staged install using DESTDIR. The old broken INSTALL_PREFIX has also been fixed. For more information see the $ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md file.
  - Documentation of the release target of the top Makefile. For more information see the $ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md file.
  - make install now by default creates relative symbolic links instead of absolute ones. For more information see the $ERL_TOP/INSTALL.md file.
  - $ERL_TOP/configure --help=recursive now works and prints help for all applications with configure scripts.
  - Doing make install, or make release directly after make all no longer triggers miscellaneous rebuilds.
  - Existing bootstrap system is now used when doing make install, or make release without a preceding make all.
  - The crypto and ssl applications use the same runtime library path when dynamically linking against libssl.so and libcrypto.so. The runtime library search path has also been extended.
  - The configure scripts of erl_interface and odbc now search for thread libraries and thread library quirks the same way as erts do.
  - The configure script of the odbc application now also looks for odbc libraries in lib64 and lib/64 directories when building on a 64-bit system.
  - The config.h.in file in the erl_interface application is now automatically generated in instead of statically updated which reduces the risk of configure tests without any effect.

  (Thanks to Henrik Riomar for suggestions and testing)

  (Thanks to Winston Smith for the AVR32-Linux cross configuration and testing)

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-8323

- Change erroneous "\\0" in documentation files erl_notes.xml and erl_eterm.xml.

  Own Id: OTP-8326

- Allow erl_match() to match ERL_LONGLONG and ERL_U_LONGLONG terms (Thanks to Scott Lystig Fritchie).

  Own Id: OTP-8400

### 1.26 Erl_Interface 3.6.4

#### 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

### 1.27 Erl_Interface 3.6.3

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The manual states that erl_receive() return the reason in the ErlMessage struct. This was not the case and the function is now corrected.

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-4969

- In send_exit.c an errorneous size of memory allocation could occur when reallocating a buffer.

  In ei_decode_trace.c the index could be updated when the decoding failed.

  In ei_printterm.c the index could be updated when the decoding failed in lists and tuples.

  In ei_decode_term.c when decoding a double (ERL_FLOAT_EXT) no check was done to ensure that the last of the 31 bytes was null terminated.

  In ei_decode_term.c when decoding references, only the first 3 bytes are read, but the index did not increment by the total size.

  In ei_decode_fun.c no check of correct buffer allocation or data length was done.

  In ei_decode_string.c the integer list string case did not decode the NIL tail correctly.

  These errors has now been fixed. (Thanks to Romain Lenglet, Paul Mineiro and Paul Guyot).

  Own Id: OTP-6117

- ei_decode_big could be decoded with a garbage byte.

  ei_encode_big and ei_x_encode_big is now available.

  Own Id: OTP-7554

- The function erl_init_resolve() did not conform to C99 standard which caused a build error on some platforms. This has now been fixed.

  Own Id: OTP-8093

- Makefile.in has been updated to use the LDFLAGS environment variable (if set). (Thanks to Davide Pesavento.)

  Own Id: OTP-8157

#### Improvements and New Features

- Added support for 64-bit integers in encoding/decoding.

  Added support for better printouts of binaries.

  Own Id: OTP-6091

### 1.28 Erl_Interface 3.6.2

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- A problem with gethostbyname in erl_start.c could cause a buffer overflow. This has now been fixed.

  Clean up of code and removed compiler warnings.

  Own Id: OTP-7978

### 1.29 Erl_Interface 3.6.1

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- A faulty validation in ei_reg_getpval caused it to never return the key-value. This has now been fixed. (Thanks to Matt Stancliff)

  Own Id: OTP-7960

#### Improvements and New Features

- Minor update to the configure script.

  Own Id: OTP-7959

### 1.30 Erl_Interface 3.6.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Minor update to the configure script.

  Own Id: OTP-7959

### 1.31 Erl_Interface 3.6

#### Improvements and New Features

- 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

### 1.32 Erl_Interface 3.5.9

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- A type-casting bug in ei_skip_term and ei_printterm on 64bit platforms rendering undefined results is now corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-7577

- A bug in the hostent copying code of erl_interface on MacOS X/Darwin is now corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-7593

- A problem with building erl_interface on FreeBSD has been fixed (Thanks to Akira Kitada).

  Own Id: OTP-7611

### 1.33 Erl_Interface 3.5.8

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Fixed bug in erl_interface when decoding broken data

  Own Id: OTP-7448

### 1.34 Erl_Interface 3.5.7

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- An erroneous freeing of memory could occur when using ei_x_format_wo_ver in erl_interface, resulting in a segmentation fault.

  Own Id: OTP-6795

- A faulty compare in erl_marshal has now been fixed. (Thanks to Simon Cornish and Paul Mineiro)

  Own Id: OTP-7368

### 1.35 Erl_Interface 3.5.6

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Minor documentation fixes.

  Own Id: OTP-7183 Aux Id: OTP-7118

### 1.36 Erl_Interface 3.5.5.4

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The symbol __erl_errno was undefined in the single thread version of the ei library, but is now defined.

  Own Id: OTP-6887

- Corrected FreeBSD build error.

  Own Id: OTP-7093

### 1.37 Erl_Interface 3.5.5.3

#### Improvements and New Features

- Calls to alloca in erl_marshal.c have been removed. A static buffer is now used instead to store node names temporarily.

  Own Id: OTP-6331 Aux Id: seq10468

- ei_print_term interprets a list of integers with values from 0 to 255 as a string. If the original list contains the integer 0, this is considered terminator of the string. This is incorrect. The function has now been modified to not look for '\0' in a string, but always print all characters.

  Own Id: OTP-6339 Aux Id: seq10492

### 1.38 Erl_Interface 3.5.5.2

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The combination of xeon processors with 64bit x86 extensions and a 32bit linux could cause ei_decode_long and ei_decode_longlong to fail for the value LONG_MIN and LONGLONG_MIN. The conversion is now made more portable.

  Own Id: OTP-6216

### 1.39 Erl_Interface 3.5.5.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Portability enhancements.

  Own Id: OTP-6132

### 1.40 Erl_Interface 3.5.5

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Different (and old) config.guess files in the erts and erl_interface applications would cause build problems on the new Intel-based iMacs. (Thanks to Sebastion Strollo.)

  Own Id: OTP-5967

- pthread header and library mismatch on linux systems (at least some SuSE and Debian) with both NPTL and Linuxthreads libraries installed.

  Own Id: OTP-5981

#### Improvements and New Features

- Support for a C node to connect to an Erlang node on a standalone host has been added.

  Own Id: OTP-5883 Aux Id: seq10170

### 1.41 Erl_interface 3.5.2

#### Improvements and New Features

- A configuration test error caused erl_interface to be built without support for threads. This has been corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-5456

### 1.42 Erl_interface 3.5.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Changes and improvements have been made to the build and test environment to solve problems with failing erl_interface test cases.

  Own Id: OTP-5295 Aux Id: OTP-5387

### 1.43 Erl_interface 3.5

#### Improvements and New Features

- Process identifiers and port identifiers have been made more unique. Previously 18 bits were used as id in the internal representation of process and port identifiers. Now 28 bits are used.

  The maximum limit on the number of concurrently existing processes due to the representation of pids has been increased to 268435456 processes. The same is true for ports. This limit will at least on a 32-bit architecture be impossible to reach due to memory shortage.

  NOTE: By default, the ERTS, and the erl_interface, ei, and jinterface libraries are now only guaranteed to be compatible with other Erlang/OTP components from the same release. It is possible to set each component in compatibility mode of an earlier release, though. See the documentation for respective component on how to set it in compatibility mode.

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-4968 Aux Id: OTP-4196

### 1.44 Erl_interface 3.4.5

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Corrections for mistakes done for patch erl_605/OTP-4874.

  Own Id: OTP-4995 Aux Id: OTP-4874

### 1.45 Erl_interface 3.4.4

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- A small optimization in ei_rpc*() was added and a bug in ei_decode_longlong() was corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-4784

### 1.46 Erl_interface 3.4.2

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Strings longer than 65535 bytes were encoded wrong in ei/erl_interface.

  Own Id: OTP-4865 Aux Id: EABln07451

### 1.47 Erl_interface 3.4.1

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- erl_call -a parsed erlang terms incorrectly due to a bug in ei_format, which is now corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-4777 Aux Id: seq8099