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<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2006</year><year>2009</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>Erl_Interface Release Notes History</title>
    <prepared></prepared>
    <docno></docno>
    <date></date>
    <rev></rev>
  </header>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.4</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p><c><![CDATA[erl_print_term()]]></c> and <c><![CDATA[erl_copy_term()]]></c> could not
            previously handle uints. This bug has now been fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4061 Aux Id: seq7079</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p><c><![CDATA[ei_x_format()]]></c> was not working correctly for floating
            point arguments on some platforms. This is now corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4379</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p><c><![CDATA[erl_compare_ext()]]></c> did not compare the node parts of
            pids, ports, and references. This has now been fixed.
            Comparison between two pids, ports, or references does now
            conform to the Erlang specification.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4512 Aux Id: OTP-4511</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface and EI now supports 64 bit architectures.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4772</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>There are new functions that support the GCC and Visual
            C++ 64 bit extended integer types.</p>
          <code type="none"><![CDATA[
int ei_decode_longlong(const char *buf, int *index, EI_LONGLONG *p);
int ei_decode_ulonglong(const char *buf, int *index, EI_ULONGLONG *p);
int ei_encode_longlong(char *buf, int *index, EI_LONGLONG p);
int ei_encode_ulonglong(char *buf, int *index, EI_ULONGLONG p);
int ei_x_encode_longlong(ei_x_buff* x, EI_LONGLONG n);
int ei_x_encode_ulonglong(ei_x_buff* x, EI_ULONGLONG n);
          ]]></code>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4772</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>If you compile the library from source you can use the ei
            library together with GMP, the GNU multi precision
            library, to convert integers larger than 64 bits from and
            to the external format.</p>
          <code type="none"><![CDATA[
int ei_decode_bignum(const char *buf, int *index, mpz_t obj);
int ei_encode_bignum(char *buf, int *index, mpz_t obj);
int ei_x_encode_bignum(ei_x_buff *x, mpz_t obj);
          ]]></code>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4772</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Some general code improvements where done like correcting
            buffer sizes, added more error checking etc.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4772</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>In order to conform to the Erlang specification,
            comparison between two pids was changed in the R9B
            release. This change did however break a deadlock
            prevention algorithm used by Mnesia during release
            upgrade. Therefore, comparison between two pids has been
            changed back so that R9B nodes are compatible with Erlang
            nodes running pre-R9 releases.</p>
          <p>Pre-R9 comparison between two pids which now is used
            again: If t1 and t2 are both pids, t1 will precede t2 if
            and only if either</p>
          <list type="bulleted">
            <item>the node local id of t1 precedes the node local id
             of t2, or</item>
            <item>the node local ids of t1 and t2 are equal, and
             node(t1) precedes node(t2), or</item>
            <item>the node local ids of t1 and t2 are equal, and also
             node(t1) and node(t2) are equal, and node(t1) was
             created before node(t2).</item>
          </list>
          <p>The node local id consist of two integers; serial which
            is most significant, and number.</p>
          <p>The Erlang specification states: If t1 and t2 are both
            refs, both PIDs, or both ports, then t1 precedes t2 if
            and only if either</p>
          <list type="bulleted">
            <item>node(t1) precedes node(t2), or</item>
            <item>node(t1) equals node(t2) and t1 was created before
             t2.</item>
          </list>
          <p>Note that comparisons between two refs, or two ports will
            still conform to the Erlang specification.</p>
          <p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-4715 Aux Id: OTP-4511, OTP-4512</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>ErlInterface 3.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface has been rewritten extensively. The library
            <c><![CDATA[ei]]></c> is now documented and supported. The old
            <c><![CDATA[erl_interface]]></c> is considered obsolete, and provided
            only for backward compatibility.</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface is now thread-safe, and multiple C-nodes may
            run from the same process.</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>New functions are added for connecting and accepting
            connections from <c><![CDATA[ei]]></c>; these are documented in
            <c><![CDATA[ei_connect]]></c>.</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>New functions are added for converting to and from Erlang
            binary format; these are documented in <c><![CDATA[ei]]></c>.</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.2.9</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Changed back the return values from <c><![CDATA[erl_send()]]></c> and
            <c><![CDATA[erl_reg_send()]]></c> to 1 (as they used to be).
            Incompatible with plain R7, compatible with previous
            versions.</p>
          <p>*** INCOMPATIBILITY with R7B ***</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3772</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>A race-condition bug in the term allocation routines was
            corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3809</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface could not be linked with pthreads.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3810 Aux Id: Seq 5032</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>The TCB of VxWorks processes no longer grows when
            <c><![CDATA[erl_errno]]></c> is accessed. On Pthreads platforms
            the use of <c><![CDATA[erl_errno]]></c> no longer crashes programs
            using multithreading.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3820</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Name clashes between Erlang emulator and Erl_Interface
            on VxWorks removed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3824</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.2.3</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Memory lossage affecting pids, ports and refs fixed.</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.2.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>An error reporting facility <c><![CDATA[erl_errno]]></c> has been
            introduced.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3641</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>ETERMs are now shrunk to a more reasonable size.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3648</p>
          <p></p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.2.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Errors and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Lists containing negative numbers were incorrectly
            encoded by <c><![CDATA[erl_encode()]]></c>. This has been corrected.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3535</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.2</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>The reference type has been extended from 18 bits to
            82 bits. For compatibility with older nodes, an R6 node
            can send a ref to an older node; if the older node sends
            it back, it has lost all but its 18 least significant
            bits, but still compares equal to the original ref.
            The external format has been extended to represent the new
            longer refs; that means for example that binaries with
            refs, produced on an R6 node, cannot be converted to a
            term on an older node.
            In <c><![CDATA[erl_interface]]></c>, a function <c><![CDATA[erl_mk_long_ref]]></c>
            has been added, and macros <c><![CDATA[ERL_REF_NUMBERS]]></c> and
            <c><![CDATA[ERL_REF_LEN]]></c>.</p>
          <p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3140 Aux Id: OTP-3139</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>The function <c><![CDATA[erl_receive_msg]]></c> has the problem that
            a fixed buffer must be given - a larger message than
            expected is simply discarded. A function
            <c><![CDATA[erl_xreceive_msg]]></c> has been introduced, which
            dynamically resizes the buffer given to it, if needed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3313 Aux Id: OTP-2927</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.1.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p><c><![CDATA[#ifdef __cplusplus extern C {]]></c> is added to all the 
            <c><![CDATA[erl*.h]]></c> and <c><![CDATA[ei*.h]]></c> files in order to support 
            use from C++.</p>
          <p>On Unix the object files are now produced with
            the <c><![CDATA[-fPIC]]></c> option to make it possible to include
            them in a shared library.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3138 Aux Id: Seq 1722</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Erl_Interface 3.1</title>

    <section>
      <title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>A buffer overflow in <c><![CDATA[erl_connect()]]></c> was causing
            C-node crashes on Linux.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-2743</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>When decoding very long strings (more than 65535
            characters) the terminating 0 was left out.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-2744</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p><c><![CDATA[erl_accept()]]></c> was not handshaking properly with
            Erlang, causing incoming connection attempts to fail.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-2862</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Very large negative numbers are no longer encoded
            incorrectly.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-2897</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Atoms could sometimes contain an unterminated string.
            This is fixed.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-2956</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface now uses the SENS resolver functions if
            they are available at runtime. This primarily concerns
            use on the VxWorks platform.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3034 Aux Id: Seq 1559</p>
        </item>
        <item>
          <p>The documentation for <c><![CDATA[erl_connect_init()]]></c> no longer
            makes erroneous reference to the remote node.</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3102 Aux Id: Seq 1671</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>Improvements and New Features</title>
      <list type="bulleted">
        <item>
          <p>Erl_Interface has been moved out of the Erlang runtime
            system (ERTS) and is now a separate application. This has
            implications for all users of Erl_Interface, who will
            need to make changes to the Makefiles used to build
            applications based on Erl_Interface. In particular,
            header and library files are no longer in
            <c><![CDATA[$(OTPROOT)/usr/]]></c>. The <c><![CDATA[include]]></c> and <c><![CDATA[lib]]></c>
            directories are now located in the directory
            <c><![CDATA[$(OTPROOT)/lib/erl_interface-3.1]]></c> (i.e.
            the directory name is now version specific).</p>
          <p>Own Id: OTP-3082</p>
        </item>
      </list>
    </section>
  </section>
</chapter>

