View Source Dialyzer Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Dialyzer application.

Dialyzer 5.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed type inference for erlang:system_info(logical_processors).
Own Id: OTP-19307 Aux Id: PR-8954, GH-8948
Dialyzer would crash when attempting to analyze a module compiled with the line_coverage option.
Own Id: OTP-19344 Aux Id: GH-9027, PR-9034

Improvements and New Features

Erlang/OTP type specifications has been updated to eliminate overlapping domains.
Own Id: OTP-19310 Aux Id: GH-8810, GH-8821, PR-8986

Dialyzer 5.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Man pages are now available for erl, erlc, dialyzer, and all other programs that are included in Erlang/OTP.
Own Id: OTP-19201 Aux Id: PR-8740

Dialyzer 5.2

Improvements and New Features

The --gui option for Dialyzer has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-18667 Aux Id: PR-7443
The documentation has been migrated to use Markdown and ExDoc.
Own Id: OTP-18955 Aux Id: PR-8026

Dialyzer 5.1.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed an issue with bitstring type inference on segments following UTF-8/16/32 segments.
Own Id: OTP-19068 Aux Id: GH-8383

Dialyzer 5.1.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix dialyzer --output flag to work. This option was accidentally removed in OTP 26.0.
Own Id: OTP-18767 Aux Id: PR-7657
Fixed a crash in contract checking relating to opaque types.
Own Id: OTP-18772 Aux Id: GH-7676

Dialyzer 5.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a bug that caused dialyzer to crash when analyzing bogus code that contained the literal atom undefined in segment sizes.
Own Id: OTP-18629 Aux Id: GH-7325
Dialyzer could crash when attempting to analyze a module that defined a type called product/.
Own Id: OTP-18738 Aux Id: GH-7584

Dialyzer 5.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

When checking behaviors, Dialyzer could generate false warning that a callback function did not have the correct type according to the spec in the behavior definition.
Own Id: OTP-18237 Aux Id: GH-6221, PR-6243
In a spec, list(none()) used to mean none/0. It has now been corrected to mean the empty list.
Own Id: OTP-18276 Aux Id: GH-6333
The compiler would silently accept singleton (unbound) type variables in a union type. Starting from Erlang/OTP 26, the compiler will generate a warning for this example. The warning can be disabled using the nowarn_singleton_typevar option. In Erlang/OTP 27, the warning will become an error.
Own Id: OTP-18389 Aux Id: GH-6508, PR-6864, GH-7116
Fixed a bug that prevented the --plts option from being used together with --add-to-plt.
Own Id: OTP-18485 Aux Id: GH-6850, PR-6854
Fixed a crash when analyzing code that contained illegal bitstring segment sizes.
Own Id: OTP-18562
Fixed a crash when formatting certain warnings that contained multi-byte unicode characters.
Own Id: OTP-18564 Aux Id: GH-7153

Improvements and New Features

Dialyzer has a new incremental mode that be invoked by giving the --incremental option when running Dialyzer. This new incremental mode is likely to become the default in a future release.
Incremental mode primarily differs from the previous, "classic", ways of running Dialyzer, in that its model is optimised around the common use case of regularly analysing a single codebase, tweaking the code, analysing it again, and so on, without explicit reference to the building and checking of a PLT.
In this mode the PLT file acts much more like a true cache, where users provide a codebase and a set of files they care about, and Dialyzer does the legwork in terms of deciding how to most efficiently report all of the relevant warnings given the cached results it may already have in the PLT (and if a PLT doesn't exist, incremental mode will create one).
Own Id: OTP-18188 Aux Id: PR-5997
Dialyzer now produces clearer error messages for contract violations.
Own Id: OTP-18238 Aux Id: PR-6271
The name of a built-in type can now be reused as the name of type locally. That is useful when an OTP release introduces a new built-in type; having the possibility to redefine built-in types locally can make it easier to maintain code that works in multiple OTP releases.
Own Id: OTP-18282 Aux Id: GH-6132, PR-6335
There is new option -no_spec to ignore all specs. It is useful for debugging when one suspects that some specs could be incorrect.
Own Id: OTP-18310
Dialyzer's overloaded domain warning is now disabled by default, and can be enabled with the flag -Woverlapping_contract.
Dialyzer used to issue a warning for overloaded domains stating "such contracts are currently unsupported and are simply ignored".
These contracts are not "ignored" but rather, Dialyzer takes the union of the overloaded domains. This means that we lose the dependency from each corresponding input to output type. Because of this, the warning is really about not being able to establish a dependency between the input and output types of each respective overloaded function specification.
Own Id: OTP-18342 Aux Id: GH-6117, PR-6654
Dialyzer has enabled (by default) warnings about unknown types and functions.
Prior to this change, Dialyzer had warnings about unknown types and functions disabled (by default).
This default value has been overwritten; Dialyzer now warns about unknown types and functions (as requested by the community in GH-5695). Thus, the following two examples are equivalent, i.e., passing the -Wunknown function is enabled by default:
dialyzer moduler.erl -Wunknown -Wmissing_return
dialyzer moduler.erl -Wmissing_return
Dialyzer has a new flag, -Wno_unknown. Its purpose is to suppress warnings about unknown functions and types.
Users who wish to suppress these warnings can invoke Dialyzer using this flag. Example: dialyzer module.erl -Wno_unknown
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-18439 Aux Id: GH-5695,PR-6822, GH-6942
Deprecates dbg:stop_clear/0 because it is simply a function alias to dbg:stop/0
Own Id: OTP-18478 Aux Id: GH-6903
Added the new built-in type dynamic/0 introduced in EEP-61, improving support for gradual type checkers.
Own Id: OTP-18522
Added the argparse module for simplified argument handling in escripts and similar.
Own Id: OTP-18558 Aux Id: PR-6852

Dialyzer 5.0.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a bug that would cause analysis to crash.
Own Id: OTP-18372 Aux Id: GH-6580

Improvements and New Features

Replace size/1 with either tuple_size/1 or byte_size/1
The size/1 BIF is not optimized by the JIT, and its use can result in worse types for Dialyzer.
When one knows that the value being tested must be a tuple, tuple_size/1 should always be preferred.
When one knows that the value being tested must be a binary, byte_size/1 should be preferred. However, byte_size/1 also accepts a bitstring (rounding up size to a whole number of bytes), so one must make sure that the call to byte_size/ is preceded by a call to is_binary/1 to ensure that bitstrings are rejected. Note that the compiler removes redundant calls to is_binary/1, so if one is not sure whether previous code had made sure that the argument is a binary, it does not harm to add an is_binary/1 test immediately before the call to byte_size/1.
Own Id: OTP-18432 Aux Id: GH-6672,PR-6793,PR-6784,PR-6787,PR-6785,PR-6682,PR-6800,PR-6797,PR-6798,PR-6799,PR-6796,PR-6813,PR-6671,PR-6673,PR-6684,PR-6694,GH-6677,PR-6696,PR-6670,PR-6674

Dialyzer 5.0.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Dialyzer would crash when attempting to analyze a bit syntax segment size having an literal non-integer size such as [].
Own Id: OTP-18307 Aux Id: GH-6419, GH-6473
Dialyzer could crash when trying to analyze a convoluted nested expression involving funs,
Own Id: OTP-18347 Aux Id: GH-6518, PR-6525

Dialyzer 5.0.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Dialyzer could crash when analyzing Elixir code that used intricate macros.
Own Id: OTP-18262 Aux Id: GH-6323

Improvements and New Features

The --input_list_file option has been added.
Own Id: OTP-18263 Aux Id: ERIERL-821

Dialyzer 5.0.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Two bugs have been fixed in Dialyzer's checking of behaviors:
When a mandatory callback function is present but not exported, Dialyzer would not complain about a missing callback.
When an optional callback function was not exported and had incompatible arguments and/or the return values were incompatible, Dialyzer would complain. This has been changed to suppress the warning, because the function might not be intended to be a callback function, for instance if a release added a new optional callback function (such as format_status/1 for the gen_server behaviour added in OTP 25).
Own Id: OTP-18127 Aux Id: ERIERL-817
The no_extra_return and no_missing_return warnings can now be suppressed through -dialyzer directives in source code.
Own Id: OTP-18148 Aux Id: PR-6068

Dialyzer 5.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed the documentation for the missing_return and extra_return options.
Own Id: OTP-18120

Dialyzer 5.0

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a bug that could cause the type analyzer to enter an infinite loop.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17644 Aux Id: PR-5223

Improvements and New Features

Optimize operations in the erl_types module. Parallelize the Dialyzer pass remote.
Own Id: OTP-17524
Added the missing_return and extra_return options to raise warnings when specifications differ from inferred types. These are similar to, but not quite as verbose as overspecs and underspecs.
Own Id: OTP-17654 Aux Id: GH-5214
The race_conditions option has been removed.
Own Id: OTP-17819
The default location of the plt has been changed from $HOME to filename:basedir(user_cache,"erlang").
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-17821 Aux Id: GH-5016 PR-5408 OTP-17554
dialyzer will now honor dependencies inside type declarations. That is, if the declaration of an exported type changes, all modules using said type will be revisited.
Own Id: OTP-17826 Aux Id: PR-5498
Dialyzer now better understands the types for min/2, max/2, and erlang:raise/3. Because of that, Dialyzer can potentially generate new warnings. In particular, functions that use erlang:raise/3 could now need a spec with a no_return/0 return type to avoid an unwanted warning.
Own Id: OTP-17897 Aux Id: PR-5651
The typer_core module has been added to provide an Erlang API for running typer.
Own Id: OTP-17964 Aux Id: PR-5660
Added the --annotate-in-place option to typer, which can be used to annotate the specs that the tool inferred directly into the source code files.
Own Id: OTP-18035 Aux Id: PR-5802

Dialyzer 4.4.4.1

Improvements and New Features

The --input_list_file option has been added.
Own Id: OTP-18263 Aux Id: ERIERL-821

Dialyzer 4.4.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

There could be spurious warnings for unknown types when a type was a subtype of an existing type that was a subtype of an unknown type.
Own Id: OTP-17963 Aux Id: GH-5764

Dialyzer 4.4.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a crash when opaque types contained certain unicode characters.
Own Id: OTP-17643 Aux Id: GH-5210
When the compiler is invoked by Dialyzer, it will no longer apply an optimization of binary patterns that would turn the pattern <<"bar">> into <<6447474:24>>, which would be very confusing when printed out by Dialyzer.
Own Id: OTP-17768 Aux Id: GH-5429

Dialyzer 4.4.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Do not crash if a PLT file no longer exists.
Own Id: OTP-17511 Aux Id: GH-4501
Fix bug in erl_types related to maps.
Own Id: OTP-17537
Fix bugs in erl_types regarding improper lists.
Own Id: OTP-17541
The underspecs and overspecs options will now generate correct warnings for misused opaque types.
Own Id: OTP-17616 Aux Id: GH-5118

Dialyzer 4.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Do not expose line number 0 in messages if there are other locations to use.
Own Id: OTP-17443 Aux Id: GH-4890
In rare circumstances, Dialyzer could crash analyzing code with a list comprehension whose value was ignored. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger for reporting this bug.)
Own Id: OTP-17482

Dialyzer 4.4

Improvements and New Features

Some internal HiPE modules have been moved into the dialyzer application so that dialyzer works when HiPE is disabled.
Own Id: OTP-16883
The experimental HiPE application has been removed, together with all related functionality in other applications.
* POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *
Own Id: OTP-16963
Add warning option no_underspecs.
Own Id: OTP-16986 Aux Id: ERL-1379, ERL-1480, GH-4033
Report filename and location for warnings returned due to the -Wunknown option. When used from the command-line, one location per file is printed.
Own Id: OTP-16995 Aux Id: ERL-1348
Add types and specifications for documentation.
Own Id: OTP-17084
Add option error_location. The option is recognized if included in the environment variable ERL_COMPILER_OPTIONS.
Own Id: OTP-17177 Aux Id: OTP-16824
Clarify how to declare records used in match patterns.
Own Id: OTP-17183 Aux Id: ERL-892, GH-4493

Dialyzer 4.3.1.2

Improvements and New Features

The --input_list_file option has been added.
Own Id: OTP-18263 Aux Id: ERIERL-821

Dialyzer 4.3.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

In rare circumstances, Dialyzer could crash analyzing code with a list comprehension whose value was ignored. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger for reporting this bug.)
Own Id: OTP-17482

Dialyzer 4.3.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Correct handling of PLTs in the GUI.
Own Id: OTP-17091

Dialyzer 4.3

Improvements and New Features

Clarify warning option -Wunmatched_returns in dialyzer.
Own Id: OTP-17068 Aux Id: ERL-1223

Dialyzer 4.2.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

In rare circumstance, dialyzer wold crash when analyzing a list comprehension.
Own Id: OTP-16813 Aux Id: ERL-1307

Dialyzer 4.2

Improvements and New Features

Improve handling of maps:remove/2.
Own Id: OTP-16055 Aux Id: ERL-1002

Dialyzer 4.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a bug where warnings about overspecified functions were erroneously emitted. Only overloaded functions were affected by the bug.
Own Id: OTP-16292

Improvements and New Features

Remove test data with GNU license.
Own Id: OTP-16146

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dialyzer 3.0.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix a map related bug.
Own Id: OTP-13709 Aux Id: ERL-177, PR-1115

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/0 has included tuple/0, but that part is removed; the type module/0 is now the same as atom/0, 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/0 (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

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

Dialyzer 2.8.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Reintroduce the erlang:make_fun/3 BIF in erl_bif_types.
Own Id: OTP-13068

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

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/0) 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

Dialyzer 2.7.4

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A bug concerning map/0 types has been fixed.
Own Id: OTP-12472

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dialyzer 2.5.1

Improvements and New Features

Handle nowarn_unused_function the same way as the compiler does.
Own Id: OTP-9833

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

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

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

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

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

Dialyzer 2.3.1

Improvements and New Features

Eliminated warnings for auto-imported BIF clashes.
Own Id: OTP-8840

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dialyzer 1.8.2

Improvements and New Features

Minor updates.
Own Id: OTP-7522

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 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

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

Dialyzer 1.4.2

Improvements and New Features

Improvements in PLT management.
Own Id: OTP-6128

Dialyzer 1.4.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Some minor changes.

Improvements and New Features

Some minor changes.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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!).

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.

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.

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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