Dialyzer

Release Notes

Version 4.1

Chapters

1 Dialyzer Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Dialyzer application.

1.1  Dialyzer 4.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Allow native compilation when using Dialyzer from Erlang. The options native (defaults to false) and native_cache have been added.

    Own Id: OTP-15880 Aux Id: PR-2283

1.2  Dialyzer 4.0.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • The HiPE compiler would badly miscompile certain try/catch expressions, so it will now refuse to compile modules containing try or catch.

    As a consequence of this, dialyzer will no longer compile key modules to native code.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-15949

1.3  Dialyzer 4.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Make sure Dialyzer does not crash if the formatting of results fails. Instead of crashing, an unformatted version of the results is returned.

    Own Id: OTP-15922 Aux Id: PR-2240, ERL-949

1.4  Dialyzer 4.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug that caused a crash when indenting a Dialyzer warning mentioning more than one record field.

    Own Id: OTP-15861 Aux Id: ERL-953

1.5  Dialyzer 4.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • 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

Improvements and New Features

  • By default Dialyzer inserts line breaks in types, contracts, and Erlang Code when formatting results. Use the new --no_indentation option to get the old behavior of not inserting line breaks.

    Own Id: OTP-15135

  • Use bit syntax in warnings instead of Core Erlang syntax, for readability.

    Own Id: OTP-15752

  • The format of the raw analysis result tagged with fun_app_args is changed to {fun_app_args, [ArgNs, Args, Type]}.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-15779

1.6  Dialyzer 3.3.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug that caused Dialyzer to crash when analyzing a contract with a module name differing from the analyzed module's name. The bug was introduced in Erlang/OTP 18.

    Own Id: OTP-15562 Aux Id: ERL-845

  • Fix a bug in the handling of the Key argument of lists:{keysearch, keyfind, keymember}.

    Own Id: OTP-15570

  • Optimize (again) Dialyzer's handling of left-associative use of andalso and orelse in guards.

    Own Id: OTP-15577 Aux Id: ERL-851, PR-2141, PR-1944

1.7  Dialyzer 3.3.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Optimize Dialyzer's handling of left-associative use of andalso and orelse in guards.

    Own Id: OTP-15268 Aux Id: ERL-680

1.8  Dialyzer 3.3

Improvements and New Features

  • Changed the default behaviour of .erlang loading: .erlang is no longer loaded from the current directory. c:erlangrc(PathList) can be used to search and load an .erlang file from user specified directories.

    escript, erlc, dialyzer and typer no longer load an .erlang at all.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-14439

  • Dialyzer can no longer read BEAM files created with OTP 19 or earlier.

    Own Id: OTP-14493 Aux Id: PR-1434

  • Speed up the computation of MD5 sums.

    Own Id: OTP-14937 Aux Id: PR-1719

  • Fix a situation where Dialyzer unnecessarily discarded contract information, resulting in missed warnings.

    Own Id: OTP-14970 Aux Id: PR-1722

  • The (not recommended) option -Woverspecs is somewhat refined, and generates warnings in a few more cases.

    Own Id: OTP-14982 Aux Id: OTP-14970, PR-1722

  • Do not emit warnings for fun expressions residing in code that cannot be run. This is consistent with how Dialyzer treats other code that cannot be run.

    Own Id: OTP-15079 Aux Id: ERL-593

1.9  Dialyzer 3.2.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix bugs concerning erlang:abs/1 and erlang:bsl/2.

    Own Id: OTP-14858 Aux Id: ERL-551

  • Fix a bug that caused Dialyzer to crash instead of emitting a warning.

    Own Id: OTP-14911

  • Fix a bug concerning parameterized opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-14925 Aux Id: ERL-565

1.10  Dialyzer 3.2.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • The error message returned from Dialyzer when, for example, a modified record field type is not a subtype of the declared type, no longer includes a call stack. The bug was introduced in Erlang/OTP 19.3.

    Own Id: OTP-14742

  • A bug relating to maps and never returning functions has been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-14743

1.11  Dialyzer 3.2.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug regarding map types that caused Dialyzer to go into an infinite loop. A consequence of the fix is that compound map keys such as maps and tuples sometimes are handled with less precision than before.

    Own Id: OTP-14572 Aux Id: seq13319

Improvements and New Features

  • General Unicode improvements.

    Own Id: OTP-14462

  • The check for unknown remote types is improved.

    Own Id: OTP-14606 Aux Id: OTP-14218

1.12  Dialyzer 3.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug where merging PLT:s could lose info. The bug was introduced in Erlang/OTP 20.0.

    Own Id: OTP-14558 Aux Id: ERIERL-53

1.13  Dialyzer 3.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • The check of bad type variables in type declarations was mistakingly removed in Erlang/OTP 18, and is now re-introduced.

    Own Id: OTP-14423 Aux Id: OTP-14323

Improvements and New Features

  • Analyzing modules with binary construction with huge strings is now much faster. The compiler also compiles such modules slightly faster.

    Own Id: OTP-14125 Aux Id: ERL-308

  • The peak memory consumption is reduced.

    Own Id: OTP-14127

  • Warnings about unknown types are now also generated for types not used by any function specification.

    Own Id: OTP-14218 Aux Id: OTP-14127

  • TypEr has been removed as separate application and is now a part of the Dialyzer application. Documentation for TypEr has been added in the Dialyzer application.

    Own Id: OTP-14336

  • The format of debug information that is stored in BEAM files (when debug_info is used) has been changed. The purpose of the change is to better support other BEAM-based languages such as Elixir or LFE.

    All tools included in OTP (dialyzer, debugger, cover, and so on) will handle both the new format and the previous format. Tools that retrieve the debug information using beam_lib:chunk(Beam, [abstract_code]) will continue to work with both the new and old format. Tools that call beam_lib:chunk(Beam, ["Abst"]) will not work with the new format.

    For more information, see the description of debug_info in the documentation for beam_lib and the description of the {debug_info,{Backend,Data}} option in the documentation for compile.

    Own Id: OTP-14369 Aux Id: PR-1367

1.14  Dialyzer 3.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Report unknown types properly. A bug was introduced in Erlang/OTP 19.3, where warnings about unknown types were simply discarded.

    Own Id: OTP-14368

1.15  Dialyzer 3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug concerning parameterized opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-14130

  • Improve a few warnings. One of them could cause a crash.

    Own Id: OTP-14177

  • The dialyzer and observer applications will now use a portable way to find the home directory. That means that there is no longer any need to manually set the HOME environment variable on Windows.

    Own Id: OTP-14249 Aux Id: ERL-161

Improvements and New Features

  • The peak memory consumption is reduced.

    The evaluation of huge SCCs in dialyzer_typesig is optimized.

    Analyzing modules with binary construction with huge strings is now much faster.

    Own Id: OTP-14126 Aux Id: ERL-308

1.16  Dialyzer 3.0.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix bugs regarding opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-13693

  • Fix error handling of bad -dialyzer() attributes.

    Own Id: OTP-13979 Aux Id: ERL-283

Improvements and New Features

  • A few warning messages have been improved.

    Own Id: OTP-11403

1.17  Dialyzer 3.0.2

Improvements and New Features

  • The translation of forms to types is improved for opaque types in a few cases.

    Own Id: OTP-13682

  • Add warning suppression to compiler-generated case statements. Warnings about clauses that cannot match and are also compiler generated are suppressed unless none of the clauses return.

    Own Id: OTP-13723 Aux Id: ERL-159, PR-1121

1.18  Dialyzer 3.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a map related bug.

    Own Id: OTP-13709 Aux Id: ERL-177, PR-1115

1.19  Dialyzer 3.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug in the translation of forms to types.

    Own Id: OTP-13520

  • Correct misspelling in Dialyzer's acronym definition.

    Own Id: OTP-13544 Aux Id: PR-1007

  • Dialyzer no longer crashes when there is an invalid function call such as 42(7) in a module being analyzed. The compiler will now warn for invalid function calls such as X = 42, x(7).

    Own Id: OTP-13552 Aux Id: ERL-138

  • Fix a bug that caused Dialyzer to go into an infinite loop.

    Own Id: OTP-13653 Aux Id: ERL-157

  • Fix a bug in Dialyzer related to call-site analysis.

    Own Id: OTP-13655 Aux Id: PR-1092

Improvements and New Features

  • The evaluation of SCCs in dialyzer_typesig is optimized.

    Maps are used instead of Dicts to further optimize the evaluation.

    Own Id: OTP-10349

  • Since Erlang/OTP R14A, when support for parameterized modules was added, module() has included tuple(), but that part is removed; the type module() is now the same as atom(), as documented in the Reference Manual.

    Own Id: OTP-13244

  • The type specification syntax for Maps is improved:

    • The association type KeyType := ValueType denotes an association that must be present.

    • The shorthand ... stands for the association type any() => any().

    An incompatible change is that #{} stands for the empty map. The type map() (a map of any size) can be written as #{...}.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-13542 Aux Id: PR-1014

  • The translation of forms to types is improved.

    Own Id: OTP-13547

1.20  Dialyzer 2.9

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Dialyzer no longer asserts that files and directories to be removed from a PLT exist.

    Own Id: OTP-13103 Aux Id: ERL-40

  • Fix a bug concerning parameterized opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-13237

  • Fix pretty printing of Core Maps

    Literal maps could cause Dialyzer to crash when pretty printing the results.

    Own Id: OTP-13238

  • If a behavior module contains an non-exported function with the same name as one of the behavior's callbacks, the callback info was inadvertently deleted from the PLT as the dialyzer_plt:delete_list/2 function was cleaning up the callback table.

    Own Id: OTP-13287

  • Correct the contract for erlang:byte_size/1

    Correct the handling of comparison operators for map and bit string operands.

    Own Id: OTP-13312

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer recognizes calls to M:F/A where M, F, and A are all literals.

    Own Id: OTP-13217

1.21  Dialyzer 2.8.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Reintroduce the erlang:make_fun/3 BIF in erl_bif_types.

    Own Id: OTP-13068

1.22  Dialyzer 2.8.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Improve the translation of forms to types.

    Own Id: OTP-12865

  • Fix a bug concerning parameterized opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-12866

  • Fix a bug concerning parameterized opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-12940

  • Fix bugs concerning erlang:abs/1.

    Own Id: OTP-12948

  • Fix a bug concerning lists:keydelete/3 with union and opaque types.

    Own Id: OTP-12949

  • Use new function hipe:erts_checksum to get correct runtime checksum for cached beam files.

    Own Id: OTP-12964 Aux Id: OTP-12963, OTP-12962

1.23  Dialyzer 2.8

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • The translation of Erlang forms to the type representation used by Dialyzer has been improved in several ways. The most important change is that deeply nested records can be handled.

    Own Id: OTP-12350

  • Fix a bug that could cause bogus warnings for opaque types.

    In Erlang/OTP 18 two parameterized types declared in the same module always result in a contradiction (none()) when combined outside of the module where they are declared, unless they have the same number of parameters.

    The behaviour is different from Erlang/OTP 17 where, for instance, dict:dict() and dict:dict(_, _), which are both opaque, can be combined outside of the dict module.

    In Erlang/OTP 18, dict:dict() and dict:dict(_, _) can still be combined outside of the dict module. That has been made possible by not declaring dict:dict() as opaque.

    Own Id: OTP-12493

  • Update the PLT properly when a module is changed. (Thanks to James Fish for the bug report, and to Stavros Aronis for fixing the bug.)

    Own Id: OTP-12637

  • An argument of '*'/2 is not constraind if the other operand can be zero.

    Own Id: OTP-12725

  • Mention the option check_plt among the dialyzer:gui() options. (Thanks to James Fish.)

    Own Id: OTP-12750

  • Fix a bug which could cause an infinite loop in Dialyzer.

    Own Id: OTP-12826

Improvements and New Features

  • The -dialyzer() attribute can be used for suppressing warnings in a module by specifying functions or warning options. It can also be used for requesting warnings in a module.

    Own Id: OTP-10280

  • The pre-defined types array(), dict(), digraph(), gb_set(), gb_tree(), queue(), set(), and tid() have been removed.

    Own Id: OTP-11445 Aux Id: OTP-10342, OTP-9352

  • A few type names that have been used for representing certain predefined types can now be used for user-defined types. This affects the types product/_, union/_, and range/2 as well as tuple/N (N > 0), map/N (N > 0), atom/1, integer/1, binary/2, record/_, and 'fun'/_. A consequence is that, for example, it is no longer possible to refer to a record type with record(r); instead the usual record notation, #r{}, is to be used.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-11851

  • When implementing user-defined behaviours it is now possible to specify optional callback functions. See OTP Design Principles User's Guide, Sys and Proc_Lib, User-Defined Behaviours, for details.

    Own Id: OTP-11861

  • Add two options to the Dialyzer: no_missing_calls suppresses warnings about calls to missing or unexported functions; unknown lets warnings about unknown functions or types affect the exit status. See also dialyzer(3).

    Own Id: OTP-12682

  • By default, dialyzer will now cache native versions of dialyzer modules to avoid having to re-compile them each time dialyzer is started. Caching can be disabled using the option --no_native_cache.

    Own Id: OTP-12779

1.24  Dialyzer 2.7.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • A bug concerning map() types has been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-12472

1.25  Dialyzer 2.7.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • When compiling Erlang source, Dialyzer now ignores the environment variable ERL_COMPILER_OPTIONS as well as skips the Erlang Compiler option warnings_as_errors.

    Own Id: OTP-12225

  • Dialyzer did not check the type of record elements when updating them. The bug, introduced in Erlang/OTP 17.1, has been corrected. (Thanks to Nicolas Dudebout for pointing it out.)

    Own Id: OTP-12319

  • Coalesce map keys in dialyzer mode

    This fixes a regression introduced in commit 805f9c89fc01220bc1bb0f27e1b68fd4eca688ba The problem occurred with compounded map keys compiled with dialyzer option turned on, '+dialyzer'.

    Reported by: Ivan Uemlianin

    Own Id: OTP-12347

1.26  Dialyzer 2.7.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • A bug concerning is_record/2,3 has been fixed, as well as some cases where Dialyzer could crash due to reaching system limits.

    Own Id: OTP-12018

  • When given the -Wunderspecs flag Dialyzer sometimes output bogus warnings for parametrized types. This bug has been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-12111

  • Dialyzer now fetch the compile options from beam files, and use them when creating core from the abstract code. Previously the options were ignored.

    Own Id: OTP-12150

1.27  Dialyzer 2.7.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a bug concerning opaque types. Thanks to Shayan Pooya for pointing out the bug.

    Own Id: OTP-11869

  • A bug where Dialyzer failed to handle typed records with fields containing remote types has been fixed. Thanks to Erik Søe Sørensen for reporting the bug.

    Own Id: OTP-11918

  • Make sure that only literal records are checked against the types of record definitions. Until now the elements of tuples have been checked against record field types if the tag och size of the tuple matches the record definition, often with surprising results.

    Own Id: OTP-11935 Aux Id: seq12590

  • A Dialyzer crash involving analysis of Map types has now been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-11947

1.28  Dialyzer 2.7

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Dialyzer will no longer emit warnings when inspecting or modifying opaque types within the scope of a module.

    Hitherto the shape of terms (tuple, list, etc.) has been used to determine the opaque terms, but now the contracts are used for decorating types with opacity.

    Own Id: OTP-10397

  • With --Wunmatched_returns, dialyzer will no longer warn when the value of a list comprehension is ignored, provided that the each value in the list would be an atomic value (such as integer or atoms, as opposed to tuples and lists). Example: ignoring '[io:format(...) || ...]' will not cause a warning, while ignoring '[file:close(Fd) || ...]' will.

    Own Id: OTP-11626

  • The man page for dialyzer now contains correct information regarding -Wno_behaviours. (Thanks to Steve Vinosky.)

    Own Id: OTP-11706

  • Fix handling of 'on_load' attribute. (Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.)

    Own Id: OTP-11743

  • Application upgrade (appup) files are corrected for the following applications:

    asn1, common_test, compiler, crypto, debugger, dialyzer, edoc, eldap, erl_docgen, et, eunit, gs, hipe, inets, observer, odbc, os_mon, otp_mibs, parsetools, percept, public_key, reltool, runtime_tools, ssh, syntax_tools, test_server, tools, typer, webtool, wx, xmerl

    A new test utility for testing appup files is added to test_server. This is now used by most applications in OTP.

    (Thanks to Tobias Schlager)

    Own Id: OTP-11744

  • The generalization of guard constraints has been modified.

    Own Id: OTP-11798 Aux Id: seq12547

  • Dialyzer now plays nicely with funs that come as "external" arguments. (Thanks to Stavros Aronis for fixing the bug.)

    Own Id: OTP-11826

Improvements and New Features

  • The pre-defined types array/0, dict/0, digraph/0, gb_set/0, gb_tree/0, queue/0, set/0, and tid/0 have been deprecated. They will be removed in Erlang/OTP 18.0.

    Instead the types array:array/0, dict:dict/0, digraph:graph/0, gb_set:set/0, gb_tree:tree/0, queue:queue/0, sets:set/0, and ets:tid/0 can be used. (Note: it has always been necessary to use ets:tid/0.)

    It is allowed in Erlang/OTP 17.0 to locally re-define the types array/0, dict/0, and so on.

    New types array:array/1, dict:dict/2, gb_sets:set/1, gb_trees:tree/2, queue:queue/1, and sets:set/1 have been added.

    A compiler option, nowarn_deprecated_type, has been introduced. By including the attribute

    -compile(nowarn_deprecated_type).

    in an Erlang source file, warnings about deprecated types can be avoided in Erlang/OTP 17.0.

    The option can also be given as a compiler flag:

    erlc +nowarn_deprecated_type file.erl

    Own Id: OTP-10342

  • Removed gs based applications and gs based backends. The observer application replaces the removed applications.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-10915

  • Forbid unsized fields in patterns of binary generators and simplified v3_core's translation of bit string generators. (Thanks to Anthony Ramine.)

    Own Id: OTP-11186

  • EEP43: New data type - Maps

    With Maps you may for instance:

    M0 = #{ a => 1, b => 2}, % create associations
    M1 = M0#{ a := 10 }, % update values
    M2 = M1#{ "hi" => "hello"}, % add new associations
    #{ "hi" := V1, a := V2, b := V3} = M2. % match keys with values

    For information on how to use Maps please see Map Expressions in the Reference Manual.

    The current implementation is without the following features:

    No variable keys
    No single value access
    No map comprehensions

    Note that Maps is experimental during OTP 17.0.

    Own Id: OTP-11616

  • Parameterized opaque types have been introduced.

    Own Id: OTP-11625

  • Some function specs are corrected or moved and some edoc comments are corrected in order to allow use of edoc. (Thanks to Pierre Fenoll)

    Own Id: OTP-11702

1.29  Dialyzer 2.6.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • A bug that made it impossible to do any analyses from the GUI has been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-11057 Aux Id: seq12313

Improvements and New Features

  • Include module, function and arity in Dialyzer's "overlapping domain" warnings. Thanks to Magnus Henoch.

    Own Id: OTP-10918

  • Improve Dialyzer output for scan errors. Thanks to Magnus Henoch.

    Own Id: OTP-10996

  • Integrate elliptic curve contribution from Andreas Schultz

    In order to be able to support elliptic curve cipher suites in SSL/TLS, additions to handle elliptic curve infrastructure has been added to public_key and crypto.

    This also has resulted in a rewrite of the crypto API to gain consistency and remove unnecessary overhead. All OTP applications using crypto has been updated to use the new API.

    Impact: Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) offers equivalent security with smaller key sizes than other public key algorithms. Smaller key sizes result in savings for power, memory, bandwidth, and computational cost that make ECC especially attractive for constrained environments.

    Own Id: OTP-11009

  • Bitstring type inference and duplicate module error message fixes. Thanks to Stavros Aronis.

    Own Id: OTP-11027

  • Erlang source files with non-ASCII characters are now encoded in UTF-8 (instead of latin1).

    Own Id: OTP-11041 Aux Id: OTP-10907

1.30  Dialyzer 2.6

Improvements and New Features

  • Miscellaneous updates due to Unicode support.

    Own Id: OTP-10820

  • User defined types with same name and different arity and documentation inconsistencies. Thanks Stavros Aronis.

    Own Id: OTP-10861

  • Native code compilation changes. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.

    Own Id: OTP-10865

1.31  Dialyzer 2.5.4

Improvements and New Features

  • Support for Unicode has been implemented.

    Own Id: OTP-10302

  • Dialyzer no longer outputs warnings for unused anonymous functions ("funs"). Warnings are still output for unused functions.

    Own Id: OTP-10433

  • 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

  • Some examples overflowing the width of PDF pages have been corrected.

    Own Id: OTP-10665

  • Fix precision of record creation violation warnings. Thanks to Stavros Aronis

    Own Id: OTP-10681

  • Report spec discrepancy on mismatching lists. Thanks to Stavros Aronis.

    Own Id: OTP-10740

  • Properly support functions with arbitrary arity in type specs. Thanks to Stavros Aronis.

    Own Id: OTP-10772

1.32  Dialyzer 2.5.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix a crash in race condition detection

    Remove old untested experimental extension

    Respect {plt_check,false} option when using dialyzer:run/1

    Fix handling of tuple set remote types appearing in tuple sets

    Own Id: OTP-10464

1.33  Dialyzer 2.5.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Correct handling of type names in contracts. Fix crash related to contract checking. Do not rewrite unchanged PLT.

    Own Id: OTP-10083

  • Stop a forgotten server process

    Dialyzer forgot to stop a server process before finishing its analysis. This is a concurrency error detected by Concuerror. Changes to fix warnings identified by running dialyzer -Wunmatched_returns. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.

    Own Id: OTP-10231

Improvements and New Features

  • Bug fixes and improvements of dialyzer_typesig.

    Own Id: OTP-10082

  • Add parallel dialyzer support

    Own Id: OTP-10103

  • An alternative implementation of the solver in dialyzer_typesig has been introduced. It is faster than the original implementation.

    Own Id: OTP-10110

  • Bugs in erl_types:t_inf() (HiPE) and in dialyzer_dataflow (Dialyzer) have been fixed.

    Own Id: OTP-10191

1.34  Dialyzer 2.5.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Handle nowarn_unused_function the same way as the compiler does.

    Own Id: OTP-9833

1.35  Dialyzer 2.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix false warning about closure application

    Whenever a variable that could hold one of two or more possible closures was used in a particular application, the application was assumed to fail if ONE of the closures would fail in this application. This has been corrected to infer failing application if ALL possible closures would fail in the particular application.

    Change category of 'might also return' warnings

    Dialyzer emits warnings like the following "The specification for _ states that the function might also return _ but the inferred return is _", which are actually underspecifications and not wrong type specifications. This patch makes sure that they are filed under the appropriate category.

    Own Id: OTP-9707

  • Wrap up behaviours patch for Dialyzer

    • Enable warnings by default, add two options for suppressing them

    • Fix warning formatting and update testsuites.

    • Detection of callback-spec discrepancies

    • Allow none() as return value in callbacks

    • Behaviour callback discrepancy detection for Dialyzer

    • Add lookup function for callbacks

    • Store callbacks in codeserver and PLT

    • Collect callback definitions during compilation

    • Update inets results

    Own Id: OTP-9731

    • No warnings for underspecs with remote types

    • Fix crash in Typer

    • Fix Dialyzer's warning for its own code

    • Fix Dialyzer's warnings in HiPE

    • Add file/line info in a particular Dialyzer crash

    • Update inets test results

    Own Id: OTP-9758

    • 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

Improvements and New Features

  • Optimize the joining of maps in dialyzer_dataflow.

    Own Id: OTP-9761

1.36  Dialyzer 2.4.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Update results of race_SUITE/extract_translations Update results of small_SUITE/flatten Add codec_can and list_to_bitstring tests Fix bug when reporting unused functions Update Dialyzer r9c_suite results Fix dialyzer warning on default clause for binary comprehension (Thanks to Ivan Dubrov)

    Own Id: OTP-9483

  • Fix server loop detection

    Dialyzer does not normally emit warnings for functions that implement non-terminating server loops. This detection failed when some of the elements in an SCC terminated normally (being for example list comprehensions or other generic anonymous functions that were included in the SCC). This patch fixes that.

    Own Id: OTP-9489

  • Add a proplist() type

    Recently I was adding specs to an API and found that there is no canonical proplist() type defined. (Thanks to Ryan Zezeski)

    Own Id: OTP-9499

  • Suppress some warnings about generation of non-returning funs

    No warnings are emitted for funs that are non-returning when the function that generates them has a contract that specifies that it will return such a non-returning fun.

    Enhance Dialyzer's inference on comparisons

    This patch makes Dialyzer aware of Erlang's total ordering of terms, enabling discrepancy detection in cases where e.g. integer() < tuple() is treated as a comparison that might also return false (when it is certain to always return true).

    Minor fix in dead code

    Fix infinite loop in dataflow

    Update r9c/{inets,mnesia} results in dialyzer's test suite

    Add origin information to #fun_var closures

    (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz and Maria Christakis)

    Own Id: OTP-9529

  • Quote atoms if necessary in types

    Atoms in some occurrences were not correctly quoted when formatted to strings, for instance by the typer program (Thanks to Tomas Abrahamsson)

    Update Dialyzer's reference results

    Own Id: OTP-9560

  • Fix typer's crash for nonexisting files Remove unused macro Fix bug in dataflow Decrease tuple arity limit This fixes a memory related crash.

    Own Id: OTP-9597

Improvements and New Features

  • Types for several BIFs have been extended/corrected. Also the types for types for lists:keyfind/3, lists:keysearch/3, and lists:keyemember/3 have been corrected. The incorrect/incomplete types could cause false dialyzer warnings.

    Own Id: OTP-9496

1.37  Dialyzer 2.4.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fix the name of an error function(Thanks to Maria christakis)

    Own Id: OTP-9175

  • Fix crash related with the contract blame assignment patch

    Own Id: OTP-9219

  • dialyzer/doc: synchronize manual.txt and dialyzer.xml (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)

    Own Id: OTP-9226

  • Simplify Dialyzer's test suite structure

    *_SUITE.erl files are now automatically generated by the respective data directories by the Makefile.

    Own Id: OTP-9278

1.38  Dialyzer 2.4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Add a --fullpath option to Dialyzer

    This change adds a --fullpath option to Dialyzer, which makes the warning messages contain the full path of the corresponding file.

    Original patch submitted by Magnus Henoch (legoscia) on 15/9/2010 and cooked to death in the 'pu' branch all this time.

    The patch was essentially correct and most of it has been used as is, but there have been some changes to make the code slightly prettier, avoid some code duplication, and add documentation to dialyzer's doc files and to its help message.

    Own Id: OTP-9098

  • Fix warnings about guards containing not

    The wording of warnings about unsatisfiable guards that used 'not' was incorrect (the 'not' was not mentioned and it appeared as "Guard test is_atom(atom()) can never succeed") (thanks to Stavros Aronis).

    Own Id: OTP-9099

  • Version 2.4.2 (in Erlang/OTP R14B02) ------------------------------------ - Added --fullpath option to display files with warnings with their full file names (thanks to Magnus Henoch for the original patch). - Better handling of 'and'/'or'/'not' guards that generate warnings (thanks to Stavros Aronis). - Better blame assignment for cases when a function's spec is erroneous (thanks to Stavros Aronis). - More descriptive warnings when a tuple/record pattern contains subterms that violate the declared types of record fields (thanks to Matthias Lang for the test case and for Stavros Aronis for the actual fix).

    Own Id: OTP-9126

  • Add spec to dialyzer_cl_parse:get_lib_dir/1

    Own Id: OTP-9129

Improvements and New Features

  • Test suites for Dialyzer

    This is a transcription of most of the cvs.srv.it.uu.se:/hipe repository dialyzer_tests into test suites that use the test server framework.

    See README for information on how to use the included scripts for modifications and updates.

    When testing Dialyzer it's important that several OTP modules are included in the plt. The suites takes care of that too.

    Own Id: OTP-9116

1.39  Dialyzer 2.4.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • - Fixed pretty rare infinite loop when refining the types of an SCC whose functions all returned none() (thanks to Stavros Aronis).

    - Fixed pretty rare crash when taking the infimum of two tuple_sets.

    Own Id: OTP-8979

Improvements and New Features

  • - Added ability to supply multiple PLTs for the analysis (option --plts). Currently these PLTs must be independent (i.e., no module appears in more than one PLT) and there must not include files with module name clashes.

    - Strengthened and streamlined hard-coded type information for some BIFs and key library functions.

    Own Id: OTP-8962

1.40  Dialyzer 2.3.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Eliminated warnings for auto-imported BIF clashes.

    Own Id: OTP-8840

1.41  Dialyzer 2.3.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Various changes to dialyzer-related files for R14.

    - Dialyzer properly supports the new attribute -export_type and checks that remote types only refer to exported types. A warning is produced if some files/applications refer to types defined in modules which are neither in the PLT nor in the analyzed applications.

    - Support for detecting data races involving whereis/1 and unregister/1.

    - More precise identification of the reason(s) why a record construction violates the types declared for its fields.

    - Fixed bug in the handling of the 'or' guard.

    - Better handling of the erlang:element/2 BIF.

    - Complete handling of Erlang BIFs.

    Own Id: OTP-8699

1.42  Dialyzer 2.2.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Much better support for opaque types (thanks to Manouk Manoukian).

    Added support for recursive types (experimental).

    Added support for parameterized modules.

    Dialyzer now warns when -specs state that a function returns some type when in fact it does not.

    Added --no_native (-nn) option so that the user can bypass the native code compilation that dialyzer heuristically performs when dialyzing many files.

    Fixed minor bug in the dialyzer script allowing the --wx option to bring up the wx-based GUI regardless of its placement in the options list.

    Options --apps and -Wrace_conditions, which were added in the previous version, are now properly documented in the manual.

    Own Id: OTP-8464

1.43  Dialyzer 2.1.0

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

  • Dialyzer can statically detect some kinds of data races in Erlang programs. Use the new option -Wrace_conditions to enable the race analysis. The technique is described in a paper which is available at: http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/hipe/dialyzer/publications/races.pdf

    Added support for packages (thanks to Maria Christakis).

    There has been a major change in the default mode of Dialyzer. Previously, the default mode was the GUI, while now it is the command line. As a result of this change, it is now possible to analyze a set of files/dirs with the command:

    • dialyzer file1 ... fileN

    In other words, the -c (--command-line) option is no longer necessary, though it will be retained for some time for backwards compatibility. To start dialyzer's GUI use either of the following commands:

    • dialyzer --gui %% for the old gs-based GUI
    • dialyzer --wx %% for the new wx-based GUI (where available)

    There is a new option --apps which allows the user to easily refer to Erlang/OTP applications and include them in the analysis or in the building of the PLT. For example, we recommend building the PLT with:

    • dialyzer --build_plt --apps erts kernel stdlib mnesia ...

    The new option can also take absolute file names as well as applications. Note that the application versions that will be included in the PLT are those that correspond to the Erlang/OTP system which is used.

    Dialyzer has a new wxWidgets based GUI (thanks to Elli Frangaki) for platforms where the wx application is available.

    Own Id: OTP-8300

1.44  Dialyzer 2.0.0

Improvements and New Features

  • There is a major addition to the capabilities of dialyzer, worthy of bumping the version number. Starting with this version, dialyzer not only accepts but also properly processes remote types (i.e., types of the form ModuleName:TypeName()). Previous dialyzer versions only accepted this notation in -type and -spec declarations, but effectively ignored its information by mapping remote types to the type any(). In contrast, starting with this version, remote types are used in the analysis and are also stored in the PLTs. (This addition changes the format of PLTs and requires rebuilding any PLTs created by an older dialyzer version.) Note that dialyzer will complain and abort the analysis of a set of modules if it needs to process a remote type without a definition (either because the module does not include a definition of the type or the module is not included in the analysis). We may relax this restriction in a future version.

    Fixed minor issue with dialyzer:run/1 crashing (upon its return) when used for adding type information to an existing PLT.

    Fixed minor but quite annoying issues in dialyzer's GUI.

    Own Id: OTP-8187

1.45  Dialyzer 1.9.2

Improvements and New Features

  • Fixed problem with type inference going into an infinite loop when analyzing a strongly connected component of functions that do not return but also contain an erroneous call which makes them fail and be assigned the type none() instead of the type unit().

    More accurate type information for some BIFs and library files.

    Introduced boolean() as the `official' name for the type was so far known as bool(). The latter is still accepted as well as boolean().

    Own Id: OTP-8037

1.46  Dialyzer 1.9.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Has better handling of opaque types.

    The handling of UTF segments of bitstreams has been significantly strengthened and revised. In all probability, now it is correct.

    Own Id: OTP-7958

1.47  Dialyzer 1.9.0

Improvements and New Features

  • The analysis accepts opaque type declarations and detects violations of opacity of terms of such types. Starting with R13, many Erlang/OTP standard libraries (array, dict, digraph, ets, gb_sets, gb_trees, queue, and sets) contain opaque type declarations of their main data types. Dialyzer will spit out warnings in code that explicitly depends on the structure of these terms.

    Added support for handling UTF segments in bitstreams and for detecting obvious type errors in these segments. Warning: This code is not terribly tested though since there are very few Erlang programs which use Unicode-based binaries - not surprising since this is a new language feature of R13.

    Strengthened the discrepancy identification when testing for equality and matching between terms of different types. This detects more bugs in code.

    Added warning for M:F(...) calls where M is not a module term and F is not an atom. Previously, such calls where found to fail but the reason for the failure was not reported.

    Added a convenient shorthand for the --no_check_plt option (-n).

    Added the --dump_callgraph option for dumping the callgraph of all files that are analyzed into a specified file. The callgraph either be dumped in raw format, in .dot format, or converted to a .ps (postscript) file. Note that in large callgraphs the generated postscript file might not be interpretable by Ghostview. (Thanks to Ilya Khlopotov for the initial version of this functionality.)

    Own Id: OTP-7864

1.48  Dialyzer 1.8.3

Improvements and New Features

  • Added the --no_check_plt option that makes the startup time faster when working with stable PLTs that do not change.

    Changed the phrasing of some warnings so that they do not cause confusion to some users and correspond better to reality.

    Own Id: OTP-7632

1.49  Dialyzer 1.8.2

Improvements and New Features

  • Minor updates.

    Own Id: OTP-7522

1.50  Dialyzer 1.8.1

Improvements and New Features

  • There is new --raw option for Dialyzer to output the result of the analysis in Erlang term, to facilitate later filtering and/or formatting.

    Own Id: OTP-7386

  • The return type of the Erlang interface dialyzer:run/1 has changed to only return a list of warnings. If something goes wrong dialyzer dies with an exception.

    The handling of the PLT is now more flexible. There is no longer any default PLT included with OTP. Please consult the manual for the changes.

    Own Id: OTP-7389

1.51  Dialyzer 1.8.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer's analysis is from now on exclusively based on success typings. In particular, support for options --old_style and --dataflow has been discontinued.

    Better and more aggressive handling of type information in records.

    Dialyzer has a new warning option -Wunmatched_returns which warns for function calls that ignore the return value. This catches many common programming errors (e.g. calling file:close/1 and not checking for the absence of errors), interface discrepancies (e.g. a function returning multiple values when in reality the function is void and only called for its side-effects), calling the wrong function (e.g. io_lib:format/1 instead of io:format/1), and even possible performance defects (e.g. unnecessarily constructing a list using a list comprehension instead of using lists:foreach/2). Whenever a function returns a single atomic value (e.g. 'ok' or pid()), the warning is suppressed. This allows for "void" functions (returning a single atom like 'ok') or for calls to certain builtins like spawn. Because not all calls which ignore the return value are discrepancies, the option is off by default and has to be explicitly requested by the user. But we recommend it nevertheless.

    Some warning options (-Wno_comp, -Wno_guards, -Wno_unsafe_beam, etc.) which could be used when analyzing bytecode produced by an old BEAM compiler have been removed.

    Own Id: OTP-7241

1.52  Dialyzer 1.7.2

Improvements and New Features

  • The warnings returned by the Erlang interface now contains a tag describing the type of warning.

    *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

    Own Id: OTP-7134

1.53  Dialyzer 1.7.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Use of success typings is now default, is robust and detects significantly more errors than in previous versions.

    Dialyzer now accepts and takes into account type information in record declarations and in contracts -- see related paper in Erlang'07 workshop. Various OTP applications (e.g. stdlib and kernel) are partially annotated with appropriate contracts specifying types information for their functions.

    The type previously known as unit() has been renamed to no_return(). Its use in a contract as the return type of a function now silences off the "function has no local return" dialyzer warning without use of the corresponding option.

    Own Id: OTP-6997

1.54  Dialyzer 1.7.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Minor Makefile changes.

    Own Id: OTP-6689

  • Dialyzer can now use success typings to find discrepancies. As a consequence significantly more discrepancies are detected. The downside is that the analysis takes about 2 to 2.5 times longer than in previous versions, and may also result in some warnings that might be harder to interpret even though they are correct. This has been a major change, worth of increasing the version number.

    New command-line options:

    --succ_typings Use the success typings analysis.

    --dataflow (default) Use the previous analysis.

    The new type unit() has been introduced to handle the return type of non-terminating functions such as servers.

    Dialyzer's code server uses a compressed representation and the analysis requires significantly less memory than in previous versions.

    Own Id: OTP-6736

1.55  Dialyzer 1.6.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer (in the modes where either source or BEAM code which contains debug_info is analyzed) spits out line information for all discrepancies. This has been a major change, worth of increasing the version number.

    We warn users that *considerably* more discrepancies are identified by this version of Dialyzer compared with previous ones and applications. If, for some reason, warnings generated by previous versions of Dialyzer are preferable, the command line option --old_style can be employed.

    Own Id: OTP-6546

  • Dialyzer handles term comparison operators more precisely and is able to identify more discrepancies in 'if' or 'case' statements with comparisons.

    Dialyzer has more precise type information for many standard OTP functions.

    Own Id: OTP-6547

1.56  Dialyzer 1.5.1

Improvements and New Features

  • Updated the chapter "More on the Persistent Lookup Table (PLT)" in Dialyzer User's Guide and added information on how to use Dialyzer from Erlang to dialyzer(3). Also, the Dialyzer text files used by its GUI are now included in the Erlang/OTP release.

    Own Id: OTP-6361

  • New options --check_init_plt and --verbose.

    Improvements in the analysis (meaning that this version can find more discrepancies than the previous version).

    Own Id: OTP-6421

1.57  Dialyzer 1.5.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer's building of PLT is based on a different type inference algorithm. More specifically, Dialyzer uses inference of refined success typings to infer function prototypes. As a result, Dialyzer bases its analysis on a significantly more powerful basis and thus is able to detect more discrepancies. The downside is that building the PLT is a considerably slower process. We will work on improving that.

    Dialyzer takes into account the BEAM compiler directive -compile({nowarn_unused_function, {F,A}}). and then suppresses the warning that function F/A will never be called.

    Dialyzer's default initial PLT now also includes "mnesia".

    Own Id: OTP-6304

1.58  Dialyzer 1.4.2

Improvements and New Features

  • Improvements in PLT management.

    Own Id: OTP-6128

1.59  Dialyzer 1.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Some minor changes.

Improvements and New Features

  • Some minor changes.

1.60  Dialyzer 1.4.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Changes for Dialyzer to work with Erlang/OTP R10B-10.

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer's analysis is significantly faster as it uses a global function call-graph for obtaining type signatures for all analyzed functions.

1.61  Dialyzer 1.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Small changes for Dialyzer to work with Erlang/OTP R10B-5.

  • Fixed a small buglet in the analysis; this affected one of HiPE's files.

Improvements and New Features

  • Modified setup script for execution under Cygwin (patch by Vlad Dumitrescu).

  • Added command line option --no_warn_on_inline.

  • Dialyzer now explicitly warns when modules with the same name but from different dirs are being analyzed (contribution by Ulf Wiger).

1.62  Dialyzer 1.3.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fixed a number of false positives that Dialyzer 1.2.0 was spitting out.

Improvements and New Features

  • Requires the presence of an Erlang/OTP R10B-4 system.

  • Dialyzer is significantly (approx 40%) faster since it now uses 'ets' rather than 'dets' for its PLT.

  • Slightly improved the precision of the analysis.

  • In the GUI version, Dialyzer now reports the list of modules that should be included in the modules to analyze in order to possibly improve the accuracy of the reported results.

  • Some more information is displayed when calling a function or closure with arguments of the wrong type.

  • The record guard now allows discrepancies involving tuples that are known to be records to be displayed as #rec{} rather than {'rec',_,...,_}

  • Added -q option which makes the command-line version of Dialyzer a bit more silent.

1.63  Dialyzer 1.2.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer works with the open source and commercial versions of Erlang/OTP R10B-2 on all platforms (i.e., HiPE support is not a prerequisite anymore).

  • Whenever a .beam file contains abstract code (i.e., has been compiled with the +debug_info option), the analysis starts from this code rather than from BEAM bytecode -- this makes the results identical to those obtained by analysis starting from source code. (This is a contribution from Bjorn Gustavsson - Thanks!)

  • Added -pa command line option for easier handling of -include_lib() directives in source code.

  • Includes all changes added in v1.1.1; see below. The "Add Recursively" functionality is also available in the command-line mode (-r option).

1.64  Dialyzer 1.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fixed problems using the shell script on Solaris machines.

  • Fixed small inconsistencies in Dialyzer's documentation and help.

Improvements and New Features

  • The command-line mode of Dialyzer spits discrepancies in stdout by default and returns a numeric value indicating its exit status.

  • Added "Add Recursively" button contributed by Martin Bjorklund (thanks!).

1.65  Dialyzer 1.1.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Dialyzer works with the open source version of Erlang/OTP R10B-1 (on platforms where HiPE support is available) and it does not require installation of a customized Erlang/OTP system anymore.

  • Dialyzer comes with an extensive command-line interface, in addition to an enhanced GUI.

  • Analysis can start from source code (through Core Erlang) as well as from BEAM bytecode.

  • Dialyzer finds considerably more discrepancies in Erlang code than previous versions.

  • Added ability to selectively turn on/off different warning categories.

1.66  Dialyzer 1.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

  • Fixed major bug of v1.0.0 which caused the analysis to stop prematurely (i.e., without properly reaching fixpoint) when analyzing more than one module. This did not affect correctness of the results, but lost many opportunities to detect discrepancies.

Improvements and New Features

  • Performance improvements in the analysis.

1.67  Dialyzer 1.0.0

Improvements and New Features

  • Initial Dialyzer version: Analysis starts from BEAM bytecode only and only a GUI version is available. Dialyzer reports discrepancies in the use of the "sequential" part of Erlang. To be used, Dialyzer requires the presence of a specific snapshot of Erlang/OTP which can be obtained from Dialyzer's homepage.

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