What's cooking in erlang/otp (2010-07-16)

[Raimo Niskanen]

The next week (Jul 18..) will be a slow week regarding 'pu' updates.
Most are on vacation, there will most probably not be anyone
watching erlang-patches for contributions...

We are now developing towards the R14B release and primarily will
accept bugfixes for that. New features are not desired in that release...

------------------------------------------------------------
[New topics]

* pg/fix-hipe-load (hipe) (2010-07-11) 1 commit
 - Fix hipe:load/1 (c1f9c3f)

* pg/load-native-code-for-early-modules (kernel) (2010-07-11) 1 commit
 - Load native code for modules loaded before the code server (2637b8a)

* rz/fix-httpc-docs (inets) (2010-07-10) 2 commits
 - Fix http client docs (294dfc0)
 - Fix broken links in inets docs (7e417c3)

* sv/epmd-check-listen (erts) (2010-07-14) 1 commit
 - check return value of epmd server listen() call (c5c8baa)

* ta/asn1ct-fix-whitespace (asn1) (2010-07-12) 1 commit
 - asn1ct: change unusual whitespace char from 0xA0 to 0x20 (c43d20b)

* tj/ct-timestamp-granularity (common_test) (2010-07-13) 1 commit
 - Include milliseconds in timestamps in Common Test log entries (4d18f18)

------------------------------------------------------------
[Stalled]

* bg/safer-local_to_univ (erts) (2010-02-11) 1 commit
 - erl_time_sup.c: test for error return from mktime() (0f62f0b)

We will not include this branch in R13B04 for two reasons:

  o We are not 100% sure that this change is harmless on all
    platforms in all timezones.
  o We have a better solution for the underlying problem
    in the pipeline soon to surface in 'dev'.

Action expected from: OTP Team

* db/tv_nthtail_fix (tv) (2009-12-01) 1 commit
 - Fix for tv which restarts while trying to open a table (28f1e36)

Since our long-term goal is to migrate from gs towards wx,
maintaining the old gs applications has a low priority for
the Erlang/OTP team. Therefore, we will accept patches that
seem sound, but we are unlikely to spend much of our own time
fixing bugs.

The author of this topic branch has found the real reason for
the problem, but uncovered additional issues.

Action expected from: The topic author - to decide whether to
include the topic branch (which is a workaround, but does eliminate
the crash) or to wait for a better fix from himself or someone else
with an interest to advance the topic.

* er/ei-decode_msg (erl_interface) (2010-03-11) 1 commit
 - Add function to decode distribution header (864091a)

Needs documentation and test cases.

Action expected from: Topic author

* jp/dependencies_makefile (compiler, erts) (2010-02-14) 3 commits
 - squash! eliminate dialyzer warning (434e2ca)
 - squash! fix snprintf for Windows (bf2708d)
 - Add dependencies Makefile generation to erlc(1) and compile(3) (7cbc437)

Approved in principle by the OTP Technical Board; now awaits a closer
review of the implementation.

Action expected from: Björn Gustavsson (the reviewer)

* kr/gs-browser (gs) (2010-02-10) 1 commit
 - Change lib/gs/src/tool_utils.erl to select multiple browsers other than Netscape (802d159)

This topic branch introduces a new call to the deprecated regexp module.

Action expected from: Topic author or anyone else with an interest to
advance the topic

------------------------------------------------------------
[Cooking]

* jn/gen_stream (stdlib) (2010-07-15) 2 commits
 - Track gen_stream processes directly for accurate test results (38a4083)
 - Patch dev to reproduce jn/gen_stream (7694a74)

This topic branch has now got more reliable testcases. We will see about
the notorious shell_SUITE:start_restricted_from_shell, but the other spurious
failures should be gone.

* bg/temp-hipe-fixes (compiler, hipe, kernel) (2010-03-15) 6 commits
 - Avoid crash by skipping compilation_SUITE:on_load/1 (234e13e)
 - Inline less aggressively for native-code compilation (9fcb48b)
 - Crudely fix return type for the lists:key{search,find,member}/3 (ef71597)
 - seq_trace_SUITE: Don't native-compile (2a81b1a)
 - Disable native code if on_load is used (3befa76)
 - andor_SUITE: Don't native-compile (97aa2da)

This branch contains temporary workarounds to avoid failing test
cases and is never intended to graduate.

* gc/gen-format-status-improvements (stdlib) (2010-06-12) 1 commit
 - Fix format_status bug for unregistered gen_event processes (95ed86f)

* jf/run_erl-disable-flow-control (erts) (2010-03-05) 1 commit
 - Teach run_erl RUN_ERL_DISABLE_FLOWCNTRL for disabling flow control (d0775cd)

* jr/cover-src-path (tools) (2010-04-23) 1 commit
 - Fix searching for source files in analyse_to_file/* (b9d5068)

* mk/net-dragonfly-bsd-patches (asn1, common_test, erl_interface, erts, et, gs, mnesia, odbc, reltool, runtime_tools, test_server, wx) (2010-06-23) 7 commits
 - Remove unused variables (dab5af5)
 - Do not hardcode browser name (82dcc82)
 - Make sure the odbcserver binary finds the ODBC library at run-time (c86dff5)
 - Use xxx(void) instead of xxx() (7142d52)
 - Use proper install method (5314ae6)
 - Add support for DragonFly BSD (03baa22)
 - Add support for NetBSD (6b72959)

We are investigating if finding ODBC run-time library (c86dff5)
is done the right(tm) way, otherwise it seems fine...

* pg/fix-segfault-on-crash_dump-with-hipe (erts) (2010-07-06) 1 commit
 - Fix a bug that could produce a segmentation fault when dumping the crash log with hipe enabled and natively compiled modules (089e48c)

* pg/hipe_crash_with_on_load (erts) (2010-06-27) 1 commit
 - Fix crash when calling functions in a module with an on_load attribute from a native module (495804b)

* pg/honor-start-type-in-rel-files (sasl) (2010-06-06) 1 commit
 - Honor start type in .rel files when building relup files (7599900)

 . Honor start type in .rel files when building relup files (7f0192d)

This change is too big to make it into the R14A -> R14B release.
It will have to be included later.

* pg/optimize_beam_dict_string_table (compiler) (2010-07-04) 1 commit
 - Optimize string table generation for beams (cc1e0b4)

* sa/callback-attr (compiler, inets, kernel, stdlib) (2010-06-08) 6 commits
 - Add callback specs into 'application' module in kernel (b7d428e)
 - Add callback specs to tftp module following internet documentation (2e8516f)
 - Add callback specs to inets_service module following possibly deprecated comments (45aaeb8)
 - Add '-callback' attributes in stdlib's behaviours (3fc32b3)
 - Automatical generation of 'behaviour_info' function from '-callback' attributes (7b89152)
 - Add '-callback' attribute to language syntax (3ccb12d)

We have having difficulties fiding the time to review this change properly
for the R14B release, which is a pity since it should come in a major release...
It will probably have to be included later.

* sb/make-files-like-erlc (tools) (2010-05-18) 1 commit
 - Change make:files to behave more like erlc (5e9d051)

* sf/erts_de_busy_limit (erts) (2010-06-08) 1 commit
 - Add flag-based setting for 'erts_de_busy_limit' constant (57c0eaf)

 . Add flag-based setting for 'erts_de_busy_limit' constant (b584553)

* ta/asn1-reporting (asn1) (2010-04-23) 1 commit
 - asn1ct: Make formatting of errors and warnings consistent (93face2)

* uw/epmd-fullnames (kernel) (2010-05-07) 1 commit
 - Allow the erlang nodename host part to differ from the hostname (e0774be)

------------------------------------------------------------
[Dropped]

* hb/edoc (edoc) (2010-04-01) 1 commit
 . EDoc and Dialyzer specs and types (516e16c)

Temporarily dropped. Will be fixed to use updated dialyzer.

* pg/xmerl_scan_hex_entities (xmerl) (2010-06-07) 1 commit
 . Fix decoding of hex entities (&#xXXXX;) in xmerl_scan (36448fc)

The bug it fixes is recognized, but the fix in the branch is
not complete... The test case is in our internal 'dev' branch
but the test suites are not released yet due to remaining
copyright issues. We will fix the bug in a future release.