1 HiPE Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to HiPE.

1.1 Hipe 3.11

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

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

Own Id: OTP-11947

Improvements and New Features

Handle Maps instructions get_map_elements, put_map_assoc, put_map_exact in HiPE compiler.

Own Id: OTP-11900

1.2 Hipe 3.10.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix compilation with 'no_remove_comments' (Thanks to Johannes Weißl)

Own Id: OTP-11564
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
There is now a test suite for the Hipe application

Own Id: OTP-11748
Support for a LLVM backend has been added in HiPE

Own Id: OTP-11801

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
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
Add support for the compilation of the is_map/1 and map_size/1 guards to native code.

Own Id: OTP-11831

1.3 Hipe 3.10.2.2

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fixed a dialyzer crash when using remote types in the tail position of a maybe_improper_list/2 type. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas

Own Id: OTP-11374

1.4 Hipe 3.10.2.1

Improvements and New Features

The encoding of the notes.xml file has been changed from latin1 to utf-8 to avoid future merge problems.

Own Id: OTP-11310

1.5 Hipe 3.10.2

Improvements and New Features

Fix the title of hipe_app documentation page. Thanks to Loïc Hoguin.

Own Id: OTP-10904
Fix native code compiler crash involving bs_match_string. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.

Own Id: OTP-10985
Loosen the assumptions of code that handles escaping functions. Thanks to Kostis Sagonas

Own Id: OTP-11031

1.6 Hipe 3.10.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Bug fixed in hipe to where it did not allow unicode code points 16#FFFE and 16#FFFF in bit syntax in natively compiled modules.

Own Id: OTP-10867
Fix bug in hipe compiled code related to the handling of is_number/1. (Thanks to Sebastian Egner and Johannes Weißl for minimal test code and Kostis for quick patch)

Own Id: OTP-10897

1.7 Hipe 3.10

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The type ascii_string() in the base64 module has been corrected. The type file:file_info() has been cleaned up. The type file:fd() has been made opaque in the documentation.

Own Id: OTP-10624 Aux Id: kunagi-352 [263]

Improvements and New Features

Support for Unicode has been implemented.

Own Id: OTP-10302
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
Update .gitignore (lib/hipe/boot_ebin). Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz.

Own Id: OTP-10705

1.8 Hipe 3.9.3

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A faulty spec for process_info/2 could cause false dialyzer warnings. The spec is corrected.

Own Id: OTP-10584

1.9 Hipe 3.9.2

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
Changes in comments and minor code cleanups

Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.

Own Id: OTP-10230

Improvements and New Features

Remove all code, documentation, options and diagnostic functions which were related to the experimental hybrid heap implementation.

Own Id: OTP-10105
Bugs in erl_types:t_inf() (HiPE) and in dialyzer_dataflow (Dialyzer) have been fixed.

Own Id: OTP-10191

1.10 Hipe 3.9.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

References to is_constant/1 (which was removed in the R12 release) has been removed from documentation and code.

Own Id: OTP-6454 Aux Id: seq10407
Fixed a discrepancy in compile_info

The BEAM disassembler used the atom 'none' to signify the absence of a compile_info chunk in a .beam file. This clashed with the type declaration of the compile_info field of a #beam_file{} record as containing a list. Now [] signifies the absence of this chunk. This simplifies the code and avoids a dialyzer warning.

Own Id: OTP-9917
Make dialyzer recognize the process_flag option sensitive add missing specs to documentation (Thanks to Tobias Schlager)

Own Id: OTP-9923
Remove hipe_ceach from hipe.app.src to fix reltool-generated release startup. (Thanks to Tim Stewart)

Own Id: OTP-9939

1.11 Hipe 3.9

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- 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

Possible to run HiPE without floating point exceptions (FPE). Useful on platforms that lack reliable FPE. Slower float operations compared to HiPE with FPE.

Own Id: OTP-9724
HiPE compiler: The possibility to compile and load selected functions from a module has been removed.

*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

Own Id: OTP-9751
filename:find_src/1,2 will now work on stripped BEAM files (reported by Per Hedeland). The HiPE compiler will also work on stripped BEAM files. The BEAM compiler will no longer include compilation options given in the source code itself in M:module_info(compile) (because those options will be applied anyway if the module is re-compiled).

Own Id: OTP-9752
Optimize erl_types:t_unify().

Own Id: OTP-9768

1.12 Hipe 3.8.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Clean up hipe.hrl.src (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)

Own Id: OTP-9511
Fix bug with binary pattern matching of floats of variable size

Pattern matching of floats with variable size (<<F:S/float>>) did always fail. Judging from similar code for ints, this bug is simply a typo.(Thanks to Paul Guyot)

Own Id: OTP-9556
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

1.13 Hipe 3.8

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix hipe bug causing minor heap corruption related to binary matching. The bug has not been confirmed as the cause of any actual fault symptom.

Own Id: OTP-9182
Enable HiPE by default when compiling for PPC64

Own Id: OTP-9198
Fix handling of <<_:N,_:_*M>> type expressions Fix the argument of erlang:list_to_bitstring/1 Remove unneeded function 'sequence/2' Same functionality provided by string:join/2.

Own Id: OTP-9277

1.14 Hipe 3.7.9

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Fix erroneous fail info of a hipe_bs_primop

Own Id: OTP-9036
The change fixes a bug in the translation of 'bs_add' BEAM instruction to HiPE's Icode representation. When these instructions appeared in a guard context the previous translation was obviously buggy.

Own Id: OTP-9044
Sanitize the specs of the code module

After the addition of unicode_binary() to the file:filename() type, dialyzer started complaining about erroneous or incomplete specs in some functions of the 'code' module. The culprit was hard-coded information in erl_bif_types for functions of this module, which were not updated. Since these functions have proper specs these days and code duplication (pun intended) is never a good idea, their type information was removed from erl_bif_types.

While doing this, some erroneous comments were fixed in the code module and also made sure that the code now runs without dialyzer warnings even when the -Wunmatched_returns option is used.

Some cleanups were applied to erl_bif_types too.

Own Id: OTP-9100
Fix bug in the simplification of inexact comparisons

On 31/1/2011 Paul Guyot reported a bug in the native code compilation of inexact equality/inequality tests between floats and integers. The relevant test was:

f(X) -> Y = X / 2, Y == 0.

and hipe erroneously evaluated the calls f(0) and f(0.0) to 'false'.

The culprit was in the simplification code of the Icode range analysis which used an erroneous test (lists:any/1 instead of lists:all/1).

Own Id: OTP-9101
Document exiting and garbage_collecting process statuses

Own Id: OTP-9102
Remove hipe constants pool

Hipe constants used to be allocated within a single, fixed-size pool for interaction with the garbage collector. However, the garbage collector no longer depends on constants being allocated within a single pool, and the fixed size of the pool both meant unnecessary allocations on most deployments and crashes on deployments requiring more constants.

The code was simplified to directly invoke erts_alloc. Debugging and undocumented function hipe_bifs:show_literals/0 was removed (it returned true and output text to the console), and debugging and undocumented function hipe_bifs:constants_size/0 was rewritten with a global to count the size of allocated constants.

Own Id: OTP-9128

1.15 Hipe 3.7.8.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Several type specifications for standard libraries were wrong in the R14B01 release. This is now corrected. The corrections concern types in re,io,filename and the module erlang itself.

Own Id: OTP-9008

1.16 Hipe 3.7.8

Improvements and New Features

Compiler warnings were eliminated.

Own Id: OTP-8855

1.17 Hipe 3.7.7

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

The HiPE compiler could crash when compiling certain modules (the bug has been latent, and been exposed by new optimizations introduced in the BEAM compiler in R14A). (Thanks to Mikael Pettersson.)

Own Id: OTP-8800
hipe:load/1 was broken. (Thanks to Paul Guyot.)

Own Id: OTP-8802

1.18 Hipe 3.7.6

Improvements and New Features

receive statements that can only read out a newly created reference are now specially optimized so that it will execute in constant time regardless of the number of messages in the receive queue for the process. That optimization will benefit calls to gen_server:call(). (See gen:do_call/4 for an example of a receive statement that will be optimized.)

Own Id: OTP-8623
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
eprof has been reimplemented with support in the Erlang virtual machine and is now both faster (i.e. slows down the code being measured less) and scales much better. In measurements we saw speed-ups compared to the old eprof ranging from 6 times (for sequential code that only uses one scheduler/core) up to 84 times (for parallel code that uses 8 cores).

Note: The API for the eprof has been cleaned up and extended. See the documentation.

*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

Own Id: OTP-8706

1.19 Hipe 3.7.5

Improvements and New Features

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

- The arity calculation is updated.

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

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

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

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

Own Id: OTP-8343

1.20 Hipe 3.7.4

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
Misc updates.

Own Id: OTP-8301

1.21 Hipe 3.7.3

Improvements and New Features

Various small bugs (one involving the handling of large binaries) were corrected and some additions to its functionality and/or code cleanups were done.

Own Id: OTP-8189

1.22 Hipe 3.7.2

Improvements and New Features

Miscellanous updates.

Own Id: OTP-8038

1.23 Hipe 3.7.1

Improvements and New Features

Minor updates and bug fixes.

Own Id: OTP-7958

1.24 Hipe 3.7

Improvements and New Features

Miscellaneous updates.

Own Id: OTP-7877

1.25 Hipe 3.6.9

Improvements and New Features

The --disable-hipe option for the configure will now completely disable the hipe run-time in the emulator, as is the expected behaviour.

Own Id: OTP-7631

1.26 Hipe 3.6.8

Improvements and New Features

Minor updates.

Own Id: OTP-7522

1.27 Hipe 3.6.7

Improvements and New Features

Minor changes.

Own Id: OTP-7388

1.28 Hipe 3.6.6

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

A fix for an #include problem which caused the FP exception test to fail unnecessarily on debian/glibc-2.7/x86 systems.

Added SIGFPE loop detection to the FP exception test. This prevents the test from looping indefinitely, which could happen when the CPU is supported (so we can enable FP exceptions on it) but the OS isn't (so we can't write a proper SIGFPE handler). x86 on an unsupported OS is known to have had this problem.

Own Id: OTP-7254

Improvements and New Features

HiPE now also supports little-endian ARM processors.

Own Id: OTP-7255

1.29 Hipe 3.6.5

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

HIPE: Corrected the choice of interface to the send/3 and setnode/3 BIFs for native-compiled code. Using the incorrect interface could, in unusual circumstances, lead to random runtime errors.

Own Id: OTP-7067

Improvements and New Features

The HiPE compiler's SPARC backend has been rewritten, improving its correctness and long-term maintainability.

Own Id: OTP-7133

1.30 Hipe 3.6.3

Improvements and New Features

Minor Makefile changes.

Own Id: OTP-6689
Miscellanous updates.

Own Id: OTP-6738

1.31 Hipe 3.6.2

Improvements and New Features

Miscellanous improvements.

Own Id: OTP-6577

1.32 Hipe 3.6.1.1

Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

Dialyzer could fail to analyze certain beam files that used try/catch.

Own Id: OTP-6449 Aux Id: seq10563

1.33 Hipe 3.6.1

Improvements and New Features

HiPE runtime system:

* added notes about supported systems to README

* support 32-bit x86 on FreeBSD

* autoenable HiPE on FreeBSD (32-bit x86) and Solaris (64-bit x86)

* updated x86 runtime system to support glibc-2.5

* work around probable gcc-4.1.1 bug affecting the x86 runtime system

HiPE compiler:

* improved performance of integer multiplications on all platforms

* corrected a code optimisation error in R11B-2 that broke some bsl/bsr operations on all platforms

* corrected a type error in the ARM backend which could cause the compiler to crash

* corrected an error in the SPARC backend's naive register allocator which could throw the compiler into an infinite loop

Own Id: OTP-6423

1.34 Hipe 3.6.0

Improvements and New Features

Support for native code on Solaris 10/AMD64.

Support for native code on FreeBSD/AMD64.

Native code now handles external funs (fun M:F/A). Native code can now also apply so-called tuple-funs ({M,F}). (Tuple funs are NOT recommended for new code; they are deprecated and will be removed in some future release.)

Own Id: OTP-6305

1.35 Hipe 3.5.6

Improvements and New Features

Improved compilation of receives for the SMP runtime system.

Improved code quality in HiPE compiler on ARM.

Fix bug in handling of re-raised exceptions in try-catch.

(HiPE loader) When native code is incompatible with the current runtime system, fall back to loading the BEAM code.

Own Id: OTP-6127