1  Jinterface Release Notes

1 Jinterface Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Jinterface application.

  • 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

  • Accept connection setup from OTP 23 and 24 nodes that are not using epmd.

    Own Id: OTP-18404 Aux Id: GH-6595, PR-6625

  • Fix javadoc build error by adding option -encoding UTF-8.

    Own Id: OTP-18215 Aux Id: PR-6154

  • 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

  • Removed use of node creation value zero as a wildcard. Also prevent zero from being used as creation by erl_interface and jinterface nodes.

    Own Id: OTP-17682 Aux Id: PR-5347

  • Add new abstract class OtpGenericTransportFactory to allow implementation of any transport protocol without dependency on epmd.

    Own Id: OTP-17961 Aux Id: PR-4839

  • Fix bug in OtpOutputStream.write_pid/4 and write_ref/3 causing faulty encodig. Bug exists since OTP 23.0.

    Own Id: OTP-17887 Aux Id: ERIERL-750, PR-5640

  • Fixed rare race bug that could cause NullPointerException on local close of connection.

    Own Id: OTP-17478 Aux Id: PR-4837

  • Accept 64-bit process identifiers from external nodes. This is the first step in an upgrade path toward using 64-bit pids in a future OTP release.

    Own Id: OTP-16720 Aux Id: PR-2680

  • 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

  • Accept 64-bit port identifiers from external nodes. This is the first step in an upgrade path toward using 64-bit port identifiers in a future OTP release.

    Own Id: OTP-17007

  • Make OtpErlangExternalFun's fields module, function and arity public.

    Own Id: OTP-17170 Aux Id: PR-3005

  • Fix bug in OtpOutputStream.write_pid/4 and write_ref/3 causing faulty encodig. Bug exists since OTP 23.0.

    Own Id: OTP-17887 Aux Id: ERIERL-750, PR-5640

  • A new link protocol has been introduced which prevents links from ending up in an inconsistent state where one participant considers itself linked while the other doesn't. This bug has always existed in the distributed case, but has since OTP 21 also existed in the node local case since the distributed link protocol then was adopted also for node local links. The bug could, however, only trigger if both participants operated on the link simultaneously.

    Own Id: OTP-17127

  • Increased size of node incarnation numbers (aka "creation"), from 2 bits to 32 bits. This will reduce the risk of pids/ports/refs, from different node incarnation with the same name, being mixed up.

    Own Id: OTP-15603

  • 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

  • Replaced deprecated <tt> with <code> in documentation.

    Own Id: OTP-16050

  • All incorrect (that is, all) uses of "can not" has been corrected to "cannot" in source code comments, documentation, examples, and so on.

    Own Id: OTP-14282 Aux Id: PR-1891

  • Added support to receive export funs (fun M:F/A).

    Before this change, export funs sent to a jinterface node were encoded using an undocumented fallback tuple format {M,F}. Existing jinterface implementations expecting these tuples must be changed to instead use the existing OtpErlangExternalFun class.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-15774 Aux Id: OTP-15712

  • Improved documentation.

    Own Id: OTP-15190

  • Add module package name for Java 9

    Own Id: OTP-14844

  • Removed all old unused files in the documentation.

    Own Id: OTP-14475 Aux Id: ERL-409, PR-1493

  • Remove generation of atoms in old latin1 external format in the distribution between erlang nodes, erl_interface, and jinterface. The new utf8 format for atoms was introduced in OTP R16. An OTP 20 node can therefore not connect to nodes older than R16.

    Atoms that can be encoded using latin1 are still encoded by term_to_binary() using latin1 encoding. Note that all atoms will by default be encoded using utf8 in a future Erlang/OTP release. For more information see the documentation of erlang:term_to_binary/2.

    Own Id: OTP-14337

  • Update build scripts to not make assumptions about where env, cp and perl are located.

    Own Id: OTP-13800

  • Fix Jinterface build on Maven

    Own Id: OTP-13482

  • Handle terms (pids,ports and refs) from nodes with a 'creation' value larger than 3. This is a preparation of the distribution protocol to allow OTP 19 nodes to correctly communicate with future nodes (20 or higher). The 'creation' value differentiates different incarnations of the same node (name).

    Own Id: OTP-13488

  • Add missing Term tag matching switch statement that was missing an external fun tag.

    Own Id: OTP-13106

  • fixed writing small compressed values.

    Own Id: OTP-13165

  • Reformat the sources for JInterface uniformly and according to the standard Java style guidelines. Provide description of the rules applied in Eclipse format (for other editors one can check the settings against these).

    In short, the formatting style is: * indentation uses only spaces; each level is 4 positions * no trailing whitespace * mostly default Java style formatting (any difference is minor) * always use {} blocks * use 'final' as much as possible

    Own Id: OTP-12333

  • Remove extra @param in javadoc as this gives an error when building the docs in java 1.8

    Own Id: OTP-12746

  • Add basic transport factory implementation. This makes possible creating connections between nodes using ssh channels for example.

    Own Id: OTP-12686

  • Add Jinterface generic match and bind methods to provide low level interface base methods sufficient for variety of higher level pattern matching/variable binding implementations.

    Own Id: OTP-12691

  • Minimal Java version is now 1.6

    Own Id: OTP-12715

  • handle empty .erlang.cookie without crashing and OtpErlangList.clone must not return null

    Own Id: OTP-12210

  • This fixes all the compilation warnings in the Java code

    Own Id: OTP-12211

  • Added an .appup file for the application.

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

  • Added a .app file for the application.

    Own Id: OTP-12178

  • Array now show meaningful values in exceptions.

    Own Id: OTP-12049

  • Documentation improvements.

    Own Id: OTP-12050

  • Include the cause when raising a new IOException, which should make the reason for the exception clearer.

    Own Id: OTP-12075

  • Arrays (here: md5 and freeVars) must not be compared with equals, which is broken (compares identity).

    Own Id: OTP-12121

  • Implement support for Maps

    The API and implementation are simplistic, like for lists and tuples, using arrays and without any connection to java.util.Map. (Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu)

    Own Id: OTP-11703

  • Fixed a bug in OtpErlangTuple constructor. Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu.

    Own Id: OTP-10819

  • Fixed finding cookie file on windows. Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu

    Own Id: OTP-10821

  • Don't compress external binary format if this increases the size. Thanks to Nico Kruber.

    Own Id: OTP-10822

  • fix reading compressed binary terms from Java (Thanks to Nico Kruber)

    Own Id: OTP-10505

  • OtpEpmd.lokupNames() no longer hangs when badly configured (Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu)

    Own Id: OTP-10579

  • 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

  • Correct spelling of registered (Thanks to Richard Carlsson)

    Own Id: OTP-9925

  • Java 1.5 has a bug where detecting codepoint offsets in strings that are created by String.substring() gives wrong results. The new implementation uses a different method, avoiding the issue. (Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu)

    Own Id: OTP-9927

  • Improve error message when creating a too long OtpErlangAtom. Also print the value that we tried to use for the atom. (Thanks to Vlad Dumitrescu)

    Own Id: OTP-9928

  • JInterface: improve OtpOutputStream buffer allocation

    Previously, the buffer was increased linearly by 2048 bytes. I now propose to use an exponential increase function (similar to Javas ArrayList, e.g. always at least +50%). This significantly increases performance of e.g. doRPC for large parameters. (Thanks to Nico Kruber)

    Own Id: OTP-9806

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

    Own Id: OTP-8993

  • The OtpMbox class did not have a hash() method, which it should have because it overrides equals().

    Own Id: OTP-8854

  • An pom.xml file is now generated. (Thanks to Gabor Liptak.)

    Own Id: OTP-8841

  • The documentation is now possible to build in an open source environment after a number of bugs are fixed and some features are added in the documentation build process.

    - The arity calculation is updated.

    - The module prefix used in the function names for bif's are removed in the generated links so the links will look like "http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#append_element-2" instead of "http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#erlang:append_element-2".

    - Enhanced the menu positioning in the html documentation when a new page is loaded.

    - A number of corrections in the generation of man pages (thanks to Sergei Golovan)

    - The legal notice is taken from the xml book file so OTP's build process can be used for non OTP applications.

    Own Id: OTP-8343

  • 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

  • Many Erlang classes, e.g. OtpErlangRef, was missing an implementation of the hashCode() method, making it futile to put them in hash structures such as HashMap. Bug and patch provided by Paul Guyot. We extended the patch to all classes and improved (?) on the hash algorithm.

    Own Id: OTP-7899

  • jinterface uses the new environment variable ERL_EPMD_PORT the same way that erl, epmd and erl_interface do since R13A.

    Own Id: OTP-7885

  • A number of fixes and improvements from the ErlIDE group; Vlad Dumitrescu and Jakob Cederlund: JDK 1.5 is now a minimal requirement for building Jinterface. New method: OtpEpmd.lookupNames. OtpErlangList is now iterable. Non-proper lists are now allowed - you have to test if a list is proper or not. Non-proper lists can also be created. New methods: isProper, getHead, getTail and getNthTail. The get tail methods creates a sublist object that re-uses the original list. OtpErlangPid is now Comparable. Empty atoms can now be constructed, a missing feature pointed out by Sebastien Boisgerault on erlang-questions.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-7832

  • A bug when Jinterface did not detect remote node disconnects has been corrected.

    Own Id: OTP-7624

  • Jinterface has been fixed to use the loopback interface when connecting to the Erlang Port Mapper Daemon - epmd. This facilitates firewall configuration and saves resources.

    Own Id: OTP-7103

  • Jinterface now refuses to connect to another node that does not agree on the other node's name. This has been a problem in that a connection was set up, but not used on a following send, which caused a second erroneous connection attempt to fail since the other (Erlang) node rejects a connection due to name disagreement.

    Problem reported and dissected by Alexander Lamb

    Own Id: OTP-7330

  • Jinterface has been updated to handle compressed terms, bitstring, new (IEEE) floats and bignums. This has caused a few incompatibilities.

    com.ericsson.otp.erlang.OtpOutputStream now extends java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream, previously java.lang.Object, and hence the method size() now return the number of bytes in the stream as dictated by the new parent class and not the buffer length as before. The new method length() returns what the old size() did return. The method count() is deprecated as it returns the same as the new size().

    com.ericsson.otp.erlang.OtpErlangLong now can handle larger values than 64-bit. Previously when larger than 64-bit integers were sent to a Jinterface node, it caused an com.ericsson.otp.erlang.OtpDecodeException. Now the integer is accepted, but the return value of longValue() is silently truncated, as opposed to the return value of intValue() that now and previously raises an com.ericsson.otp.erlang.OtpRangeException for unrepresentable values. The new methods isLong() and isULong() can be used to determine if the value fits in a long.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-6809

  • OtpMbox.receive() and OtpMbox.receive(long timeout) can now throw OtpErlangDecodeException if the received message cannot be decoded. null is now only returned from OtpMbox.receive(long timeout) if a timeout occurs. OtpMbox.receive() will never return null.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-3932 Aux Id: seq5196

  • Strings longer than 65535 bytes were encoded wrong by jinterface.

    Own Id: OTP-4883 Aux Id: OTP-4865

  • Misc bugfixes:

    • A node pinging itself does no longer cause the java program to hang.

    • OtpMbox.close() uses exit reason 'normal' (atom) instead of "normal" (string).

    • Added OtpNode.closeMbox(OtpMbox mbox, OtpErlangObject reason).

    • Added OtpMbox.exit(OtpErlangObject reason) and OtpMbox.exit(String reason).

    • Added OtpMbox.exit(OtpErlangPid to, OtpErlangObject reason).

    • OtpMbox.exit(OtpErlangPid to, String reason) is now equivalent to OtpMbox.exit(to, new OtpErlangAtom(reason)).

    • Exit signals from an Erlang node can now contain any erlang term as reason, not only atoms.

    Own Id: OTP-5088

  • For java versions 1.3.1 or later, localStatus was not sent to registered status handler when OtpNode.close() was called. This is now corrected.

    Own Id: OTP-5169

  • 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

  • Output of Java long was truncated to 32 bits. IDL long long and unsigned long long could not be used in a struct for the Java backend. All unsigned integer types for the Java backend had broken marshalling for large values. These bugs has now been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-4763 Aux Id: seq8024

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