<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">

<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2004</year><year>2010</year>
      <holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice>
      The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
      Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
      compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
      Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
      retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.

      Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
      basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
      the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
      under the License.

    </legalnotice>

    <title>Observer Release Notes</title>
    <prepared>otp_appnotes</prepared>
    <docno>nil</docno>
    <date>nil</date>
    <rev>nil</rev>
    <file>notes.xml</file>
  </header>
  <p>This document describes the changes made to the Observer
    application.</p>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.9</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The time needed for loading a crashump into the crashdump
	    viewer would earlier grow exponentially with the size of
	    the crashdump file. Reading a file of 20M would take a
	    couple of minutes, and for a dump of 250M it would take
	    between 1 and 2 hours. This has been solved.</p>
          <p>
	    Earlier, all processes, timers, funs or ets-tables would
	    be loaded into the memory of the crashdump viewer node
	    before sending it on to the web server. This has been
	    changed and the pages are now sent to the web server in
	    chunks.</p>
          <p>
	    A security function in newer web browsers prevents a full
	    file path to be sent from an HTML file input field, i.e.
	    the field needed to implement the "Browse" button when
	    loading a file into the crashdump viewer. To overcome
	    this, the file input field is no longer used. Instead a
	    normal text input field is used, and the user needs to
	    manually insert the complete file path. For convenience,
	    a shell script and a batch file are added to the observer
	    application. These can be used to start the
	    crashdump_viewer and a browser and load a file - with the
	    file name given from the command line. The shell script
	    and batch file are called cdv and cdv.bat respectively,
	    and can be found in the priv dir of the observer
	    application.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-9051 Aux Id: seq11789 </p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.4</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The multitrace.erl installation example file is now
	    installed in the examples directory. (Thanks to Peter
	    Lemenkov.)</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8857</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.3</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    The test suite has been updated for R14A.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8708</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.2</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Misc updates</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-8456</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.8.1</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    Major improvements of the Erlang distribution for Erlang
	    runtime systems with SMP support. Previously distribution
	    port locks were heavily contended, and all encoding and
	    decoding for a specific distribution channel had to be
	    done in sequence. Lock contention due to the distribution
	    is now negligible and both encoding and decoding of
	    Erlang messages can be done in parallel.</p>
          <p>
	    The old atom cache protocol used by the Erlang
	    distribution has been dropped since it effectively
	    prevented all parallel encoding and decoding of messages
	    passed over the same distribution channel.</p>
          <p>
	    A new atom cache protocol has been introduced which
	    isolates atom cache accesses and makes parallel encoding
	    and decoding of messages passed over the same
	    distribution channel possible. The new atom cache
	    protocol also use an atom cache size 8 times larger than
	    before. The new atom cache protocol is documented in the
	    ERTS users guide.</p>
          <p>
	    Erlang messages received via the distribution are now
	    decoded by the receiving Erlang processes without holding
	    any distribution channel specific locks. Erlang messages
	    and signals sent over the distribution are as before
	    encoded by the sending Erlang process, but now without
	    holding any distribution channel specific locks during
	    the encoding. That is, both encoding and decoding can be
	    and are done in parallel regardless of distribution
	    channel used.</p>
          <p>
	    The part that cannot be parallelized is the atom cache
	    updates. Atom cache updates are therefore now scheduled
	    on the distribution port. Since it is only one entity per
	    distribution channel doing this work there is no lock
	    contention due to the atom cache updates.</p>
          <p>
	    The new runtime system does not understand the old atom
	    cache protocol. New and old runtime systems can however
	    still communicate, but no atom cache will be used.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7774</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

<section><title>Observer 0.9.8</title>

    <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list>
        <item>
          <p>
	    <c>etop</c> would crash if the emulator's custom
	    allocators had been turned off (e.g. using the
	    <c>+Meamin</c> option).</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7519</p>
        </item>
        <item>
	    <p>The copyright notices have been updated.</p>
          <p>
	    Own Id: OTP-7851</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

</section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.7.4</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Minor Makefile changes.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6689</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Obsolete guard tests (such as list()) have been replaced
            with the modern guard tests (such as is_list()).</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6725</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.7.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>This application has been updated to eliminate warnings
            by Dialyzer.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6551</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.7.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Several minor bugs and race conditions eliminated in the
            runtime_tools and observer applications.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6265</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.7.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Crash dump with large integers could crash the
            <c>crashdump_viewer</c>.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6301</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.7 (R11B)</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Fixed a bug in <c>etop</c> which made the Load and Memory
            information in the header incorrect -- for example the
            value shown for <c>binary</c> (memory allocated for
            binaries) was actually the number of currently running
            processes. (Thanks to Rikard Johansson.)</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-6075</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.6.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The Observer application has been recompiled because of
            a compiler bug.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5700</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Observer 0.9.6.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p><c>crashdump_viewer</c> is faster when showing message,
            dictionary, and stack dump for large processes.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-5408</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>
</chapter>

