5 ms·

Erlang/OTP R16A has been released

84 points by rlander 14y ago

Xurinos 14y ago
Is there a convenient list that I can read that shows what feature changes have been introduced to Erlang in the last 10 years?
- chops 14y ago
  As far as I know, there isn't. This particular question highlights a shortcoming of long-form changelogs though. It would be nice if there was a way to have community-voted highlighting of a changelog pointing out the significance of each line-item of a changelog. http://sigma-star.com/blog/post/changelog-voting http://sigma-star.com/blog/post/changelog-voting (Blog post inspired by this question)
- jlouis 14y ago
  Your best bet is to grab the README files from http://www.erlang.org/download/ http://www.erlang.org/download/ which tells you part of the story.
chrisduesing 14y ago
"Support for parameterized modules (but an alternative solution provides) and packages removed" That is kind of huge, guess it is time to go catch up on the mailing list...
- chops 14y ago
  The pmod arguments have been a pretty ongoing war[1] on the mailing list, especially since it was announced R16 would be removing official support for them. With ChicagoBoss being one of the highest profile projects to use pmods extensively, Evan Miller has been arguing for them pretty extensively. At least support wasn't completely dropped, since they are providing the parse_transform to re-enable the functionality: https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform [1] A friendly war, anyway: http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2013-January/071860.html http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2013-January/07...
  - codewright 14y ago
    The fact that people like Evan Miller aren't taken seriously and heeded is why I only tinker with Erlang and haven't bothered to use it for anything. Once they start taking the little people (so to speak) seriously, I'll revisit the Erlang runtime for an actual project. Until then: Clojure. Clojure has a strong tinkerer culture.
    - dieswaytoofast 14y ago
      I think that Evan might object to being considered 'little' :-)
      - codewright 14y ago
        He's the one that named his framework "Chicago Boss" (after Tokyo Tyrant), not me. :P
    - rlander 14y ago
      I wish I could upvote this 5x. I love Erlang the language but, paraphrasing tarcieri (& zedshaw), the community around it can sometimes be a ghetto.
      - davidw 14y ago
        I think the problem is that Erlang does some things extremely well, which leads to people getting a bit smug about it, in a way that sometimes reminds me of "photography purists" sniffing at digital photography as being so very clearly sub-par, a few years ago. My reality is that for a lot of the web stuff I do, the faster development time that Rails gives me is worth way more than a bit of speed / better use of resources. I don't need a redundant site with 0 downtime, I need to figure out if there's a market for what I'm working on, and/or pivot and add features as I begin to understand things better. +1 for Chicago Boss, though, it's a solid effort that tries to push Erlang in some interesting directions. I do think I'll be using it for a project soonish, as the specs involve a lot of piping data around, and websockets, stuff that Rails is not as good at.
vladev 14y ago
From the release announcement on the mailing list: Some of the highlights are: * Optimized handling of processes in the VM * New internal process table allowing for parallel reads and writes - optimized run queue management - optimized process state changes * "Non-blocking" code loading * New internal port table, and rewrite of scheduling of port tasks. * Dynamic allocation of port structures, allowing the default for maximum ports to be raised to 65536 (from 1024) Support for UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters in source files. * Inets application: The http client now support HTTPS through a proxy * Asn1 application: Major cleanup of back ends and optimizations of mainly decode for PER and UPER. * The experimental features parameterized modules and packages are removed. An alternative compatible solution for parameterized modules is provided here https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform. * All built in functions BIF's (even if they are implemented in C as part of the VM) are now visible in the source code of the module they belong to, including their type specs. * The Wx application now compiles and is usable with the unstable development branch of wxWidgets-2.9. This means that wx can now be built on 64 bit MacOsX as well. You can find the README file with more detailed info at http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R16A_RELEASE_CANDIDATE.readme http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R16A_RELEASE_CANDIDAT...
- olgeni 14y ago
  We also get a brand new man(7) section :)
chops 14y ago
For those new to Erlang conventions, the "A" in the release number is an indicator that this is a beta release. The stable releases are the "B" branches. So in this case, R16B will be the stable version.

84 points by rlander 14y ago

Is there a convenient list that I can read that shows what feature changes have been introduced to Erlang in the last 10 years?

chops 14y ago
As far as I know, there isn't. This particular question highlights a shortcoming of long-form changelogs though. It would be nice if there was a way to have community-voted highlighting of a changelog pointing out the significance of each line-item of a changelog. http://sigma-star.com/blog/post/changelog-voting http://sigma-star.com/blog/post/changelog-voting (Blog post inspired by this question)
jlouis 14y ago
Your best bet is to grab the README files from http://www.erlang.org/download/ http://www.erlang.org/download/ which tells you part of the story.

chrisduesing 14y ago

"Support for parameterized modules (but an alternative solution provides) and packages removed" That is kind of huge, guess it is time to go catch up on the mailing list...

chops 14y ago
The pmod arguments have been a pretty ongoing war[1] on the mailing list, especially since it was announced R16 would be removing official support for them. With ChicagoBoss being one of the highest profile projects to use pmods extensively, Evan Miller has been arguing for them pretty extensively. At least support wasn't completely dropped, since they are providing the parse_transform to re-enable the functionality: https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform [1] A friendly war, anyway: http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2013-January/071860.html http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2013-January/07...
- codewright 14y ago
  The fact that people like Evan Miller aren't taken seriously and heeded is why I only tinker with Erlang and haven't bothered to use it for anything. Once they start taking the little people (so to speak) seriously, I'll revisit the Erlang runtime for an actual project. Until then: Clojure. Clojure has a strong tinkerer culture.
  - dieswaytoofast 14y ago
    I think that Evan might object to being considered 'little' :-)
    - codewright 14y ago
      He's the one that named his framework "Chicago Boss" (after Tokyo Tyrant), not me. :P
  - rlander 14y ago
    I wish I could upvote this 5x. I love Erlang the language but, paraphrasing tarcieri (& zedshaw), the community around it can sometimes be a ghetto.
    - davidw 14y ago
      I think the problem is that Erlang does some things extremely well, which leads to people getting a bit smug about it, in a way that sometimes reminds me of "photography purists" sniffing at digital photography as being so very clearly sub-par, a few years ago. My reality is that for a lot of the web stuff I do, the faster development time that Rails gives me is worth way more than a bit of speed / better use of resources. I don't need a redundant site with 0 downtime, I need to figure out if there's a market for what I'm working on, and/or pivot and add features as I begin to understand things better. +1 for Chicago Boss, though, it's a solid effort that tries to push Erlang in some interesting directions. I do think I'll be using it for a project soonish, as the specs involve a lot of piping data around, and websockets, stuff that Rails is not as good at.

vladev 14y ago

From the release announcement on the mailing list: Some of the highlights are: * Optimized handling of processes in the VM * New internal process table allowing for parallel reads and writes - optimized run queue management - optimized process state changes * "Non-blocking" code loading * New internal port table, and rewrite of scheduling of port tasks. * Dynamic allocation of port structures, allowing the default for maximum ports to be raised to 65536 (from 1024) Support for UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters in source files. * Inets application: The http client now support HTTPS through a proxy * Asn1 application: Major cleanup of back ends and optimizations of mainly decode for PER and UPER. * The experimental features parameterized modules and packages are removed. An alternative compatible solution for parameterized modules is provided here https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform https://github.com/erlang/pmod_transform. * All built in functions BIF's (even if they are implemented in C as part of the VM) are now visible in the source code of the module they belong to, including their type specs. * The Wx application now compiles and is usable with the unstable development branch of wxWidgets-2.9. This means that wx can now be built on 64 bit MacOsX as well. You can find the README file with more detailed info at http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R16A_RELEASE_CANDIDATE.readme http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R16A_RELEASE_CANDIDAT...

olgeni 14y ago
We also get a brand new man(7) section :)

chops 14y ago

For those new to Erlang conventions, the "A" in the release number is an indicator that this is a beta release. The stable releases are the "B" branches. So in this case, R16B will be the stable version.