Module Name:	pkgsrc
Committed By:	ghen
Date:		Thu Aug 17 16:16:30 UTC 2006

Modified Files:
	pkgsrc/lang/erlang: Makefile.versions PLIST.common PLIST.common_end
	    distinfo
	pkgsrc/lang/erlang-doc: PLIST distinfo
	pkgsrc/lang/erlang-man: PLIST distinfo

Log Message:
Update to Erlang R11B-0 (erlang-11.0).  Changes since R10B:

=== SMP Support ===

The major news is the support for SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing).

SMP is supported by most modern operating systems like Linux, Windows, Mac OSx,
Solaris and is becoming more important now when dual processors,
hyper-threading technology and multi-core systems are a reality.

With Erlang, most of the problems which occur in multi-threaded programs have
been solved once and for all in the Erlang VM and do not have to be handled by
the application programmers.

In the SMP version of the Erlang virtual machine, there can be many process
schedulers running in separate OS threads. As default there will be as many
schedulers as there are processors or processor cores on the system.

The SMP support is totally transparent for the Erlang programs. That is, there
is no need to change or recompile existing programs. Programs with built-in
assumptions about sequential execution must be rewritten in order to take
advantage of the SMP support, however.

In this release, the Erlang VM supports SMP with focus on stability. There will
follow a number of subsequent steps with necessary optimizations and support
for more platforms.

=== Erlang Language and Related Issues ===

    * The andalso and orelse operators are now allowed to be used in guards.
      That also applies to match specifications.

    * The BIF is_record/3 can now be used in guards. Also, is_record/3 can now
      be called without an erlang: module prefix for consistency with the other
      is_* functions.

    * The compiler options ignore_try and ignore_cond, which allowed code that
      used unquoted try or cond as atoms or record tags, has been removed. Old
      code that depended on the options need to be revised to have occurrences
      of try or cond as atom or record tags single-quoted. (Note: Although cond
      is a reserved keyword, there is no cond statement. It might be introduced
      in a future release.)

    * (ERTS 5.4.8) The new fun M:F/A construct creates a fun that refers to the
      latest version of M:F/A. This syntax is meant to replace tuple funs {M,F}
      which have many problems.

    * (ERTS 5.4.8) The new type test is_function(Fun, Arity) -- which may be
      used in guards -- test whether Fun is a fun that can be applied to Arity
      arguments.

=== New Applications ===

Dialyzer

Dialyzer is a static analysis tool that identifies software discrepancies such
as type errors, unreachable code, unnecessary tests, etc in single Erlang
modules or entire (sets of) applications.

Inviso

The Inviso application, together with some new extensions to Runtime_Tools, is
aimed at providing features for efficient tracing of production Erlang/OTP
systems:

    * Distributed tracing - tracing on any number of Erlang nodes.
    * Autostart - tracing during system start-up.
    * Overload protection - mechanisms for suspending and later reactivating
      tracing, should an overload situation occur.
    * Enhanced use of meta tracing.
    * Trace cases - predefined specifications of what to trace.
    * Off-line merging and formatting of log files.

Inviso is still under development. An easier-to-use trace tool, using the
features listed above, is planned to be released as an R11B patch in Q3/Q4
2006.

SSH

The SSH application is an Erlang implementation of the secure shell protocol.
It is considered to be a beta release, meaning there can be changes made to the
API before it reaches 1.0.

=== Existing Applications ===

Compiler

(Compiler 4.3.6) It is now possible to encrypt the debug information in Beam
files.

Debugger

(Debugger 2.0) The debugger can now handle the try/catch language construct.

Inets

The Erlang implementation of the TFTP procotcol, tftp, is now documented.

Kernel

In Kernel 2.10.X, several bug fixes and improvements have been made in global ,
the global name registration facility.

OS_Mon

(OS_Mon 2.0) The entire OS_Mon application (code and documentation) has been
reviewed and consequently updated with the goal to make the application more
robust, homogeneous and easier to configure.

STDLIB

Added the zip module with functions for reading and creating zip archives.


To generate a diff of this commit:
cvs rdiff -r1.2 -r1.3 pkgsrc/lang/erlang/Makefile.versions
cvs rdiff -r1.3 -r1.4 pkgsrc/lang/erlang/PLIST.common \
    pkgsrc/lang/erlang/PLIST.common_end
cvs rdiff -r1.7 -r1.8 pkgsrc/lang/erlang/distinfo
cvs rdiff -r1.1.1.1 -r1.2 pkgsrc/lang/erlang-doc/PLIST \
    pkgsrc/lang/erlang-doc/distinfo
cvs rdiff -r1.1.1.1 -r1.2 pkgsrc/lang/erlang-man/PLIST \
    pkgsrc/lang/erlang-man/distinfo

Please note that diffs are not public domain; they are subject to the
copyright notices on the relevant files.