Erlang -- Reltool Release Notes

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Reltool
Release Notes
Version 0.6.1

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- Reltool Release Notes
  - Top of chapter
  - Reltool 0.6.1
  - Reltool 0.6
  - Reltool 0.5.7.1
  - Reltool 0.5.7
  - Reltool 0.5.6
  - Reltool 0.5.5
  - Reltool 0.5.4
  - Reltool 0.5.3
  - Reltool 0.5.2
  - Reltool 0.5.1
  - Reltool 0.5
  - Reltool 0.2.2
  - Reltool 0.2.1
  - Reltool 0.2

# 1 Reltool Release Notes

This document describes the changes made to the Reltool system from version to version. The intention of this document is to list all incompatibilities as well as all enhancements and bugfixes for every release of Reltool. Each release of Reltool thus constitutes one section in this document. The title of each section is the version number of Reltool.

### 1.1 Reltool 0.6.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- A new sys level configuration parameter {excl_lib,otp_root} is added. When this is set, the target system will not contain anything from $OTP_ROOT. It will only contain a releases directory with rel, script and boot files, and a lib directory with applications found outside of $OTP_ROOT (i.e. "your own" applications).

  Own Id: OTP-9743

### 1.2 Reltool 0.6

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- Miscellaneous corrections:

  - Start of reltool GUI would sometimes crash with a badmatch in reltool_sys_win:do_init. This has been corrected.
  - Minor corrections of documentation and type specifications of app() and mod() are done.
  - If a module name is duplicated in an app file reltool would return an error. This is now changed to a warning.
  - Reltool would earlier not necessarily keep the order of applications as listed in the rel specification in the configuration. This has been corrected.
  - Reltool would earlier set the default for included applications to an empty list if it was not set in the rel specification in the configuration. This was correct according to sasl/systools documentation, but not according to sasl/systools implementation. We decided to change the documentation and reltool to use the value of included_applications from the .app file as default instead of the empty list, since this seems more intuitive and since systools always has done the same.
  - The value of included applications in the rel specification in the configuration did not overwrite included_applications in the .app file if it was set to an empty list. This has been corrected.
  - Reltool would earlier add load instructions in the script/boot files for ALL modules in the ebin directory of an application even if mod_cond was set to app (include only modules listed in the .app file). This has been corrected.
  - Reltool would earlier add start instructions in the script/boot file for included applications. This has been corrected - included applications shall only be loaded since the including application is responsible for starting them.
  - Status bar now indicates that reltool is working (Processing libraries...) for all configuration changes, and when generating target system.
  - Title of dependecies column in app and mod window is changed from "Modules used by others" to "Modules using this".

  Own Id: OTP-9792

- Configuration changes via the GUI had a few bugs related to error handling, rollback and undo. A major re-write of the reltool_server has been done in order to align the way reltool_server updates and uses its state and tables for all different kinds of configuration change.

  All configuration changes (except undo) now cause a re-read of the file system, meaning that if something has changed in the file system it will be reflected in the result of the configuration change.

  When loading a new configuration file via the GUI, the old configuration is now completely scratched, and only the new is valid.

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-9794

- Some bug fixes related to the handling of escripts:

  - Reltool could not handle escripts with inlined applications. This has been corrected. Inlined applications will be visible in the GUI, but not possible to include/exclude separately.
  - Loading a config which contains an escript via the GUI menu did not produce the same result as when using the same configuration at reltool start. Paths, version and label could differ. This has been corrected.
  - Loading config with same escript (source) twice caused reltool to add same module twice. This has been corrected.
  - Loading config with same escript (inlined beam) twice caused reltool to fail saying module is included by two different applications. This has been corrected.
  - Loading config which in addition to an existing escript also adds another escript, for which the name sorts before the existing one, would cause reltool to fail saying "Application name clash". This has been corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-9968

- Reltool would sometimes generate a .app file containing {start_phases,undefined}, which would cause an exception in systools at parse time. This has been corrected so reltool now omits the start_phases entry if the value is undefined. (Thanks to Juan Jose Comellas)

  In order to align with reltool, sasl will also omit start_phases entries with value undefined in .script files.

  Own Id: OTP-10003

#### Improvements and New Features

- A warning list is added to the sys window of the reltool GUI. This list will continuously show all warnings produced by the current configuration.

  Own Id: OTP-9967

- As a way of specifying one specific version of an application, the following configuration parameter is added on application level:

  {lib_dir,Dir}, Dir = string()

  This can be useful if the parent directory of the application directory is not suitable to use as a lib dir on system level.

  Own Id: OTP-9977

### 1.3 Reltool 0.5.7.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Added recommendation about RootDir parameter to reltool:eval_target_spec/3.

  Own Id: OTP-9742

### 1.4 Reltool 0.5.7

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- If a module was duplicated in the library directories visible to reltool, and the configuration did not point out which file to use, then reltool:start would always fail. A pop-up is added which asks if you want to continue with a safe and minimal configuration.

  Own Id: OTP-9383

- wx would sometimes crash due to an empty radiobox on the 'releases' tab of the system window. This radiobox is removed, and replaced by a listbox which will always contain at least kernel and stdlib applications.

  Own Id: OTP-9384

### 1.5 Reltool 0.5.6

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The system level option app_files is documented to allow the values keep | strip | all, but it only allowed keep. This is corrected.

  Own Id: OTP-9135

- Allow the same module name in multiple applications visible to reltool, as long as all but one of the applications/modules are explicitely excluded. (Thanks to Andrew Gopienko and Jay Nelson)

  Own Id: OTP-9229

### 1.6 Reltool 0.5.5

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The reltool module contained two seriously erroneous specs which caused bogus warnings when dialyzing reltool and some correct code of users. These were fixed (specs for start_link/1 and eval_server/3)

  - Code cleanups and simplifications - Fix a bug in the calculation of circular dependencies - Eliminate two dialyzer warnings - Put files alphabetically

  Own Id: OTP-9120

### 1.7 Reltool 0.5.4

#### Improvements and New Features

- Added function zip:foldl/3 to iterate over zip archives.

  Added functions to create and extract escripts. See escript:create/2 and escript:extract/2.

  The undocumented function escript:foldl/3 has been removed. The same functionality can be achieved with the more flexible functions escript:extract/2 and zip:foldl/3.

  Record fields has been annotated with type info. Source files as been adapted to fit within 80 chars and trailing whitespace has been removed.

  Own Id: OTP-8521

- A new escript, called reltool, has been introduced in order to simplify the usage of the reltool application from makefiles.

  The handling of applications included in releases has been improved. Applications that are required to be started before other applications in a release are now automatically included in the release. The kernel and stdlib applications are always included as they are mandatory.

  Applications that are (explicitly or implicitly) included in a release are now automatically included as if they were explicitly included with the incl_cond flag.

  A new embedded_app_type option has been introduced. It is intended to be used for embedded systems where all included applications must be loaded from the boot script, as these systems does not utilize dynamic code loading. If embedded_app_type is set to something else than undefined, all included applications will be included in both the release as well as in the boot script. If the profile is embedded the embedded_app_type option defaults to load.

  A new function called reltool:get_status/1 has been introduced. It returns status about the configuration in the server.

  The API functions that may take PidOrOptions as input and actually gets Options does now print out warnings.

  The internal error handling has been improved. For example {error,Reason} is always returned in case of errors even when the server dies.

  app and appup files has been added as well as a corresponding test suite.

  Various cleanups has been made in the code and in the documentation.

  Own Id: OTP-8590

### 1.8 Reltool 0.5.3

#### Improvements and New Features

- Removed spurious documentation files.

  Own Id: OTP-8057

### 1.9 Reltool 0.5.2

#### 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 HTML frames are removed.

  Own Id: OTP-8254

### 1.10 Reltool 0.5.1

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- In the new release of Reltool (0.5) there is a severe bug that may cause your source files to be deleted. The bug is triggered when you generate a target system WITH archive files AND your library directories are given with absolute paths. (Library directories are given with the ERL_LIBS environment variable or with the lib_dirs configuration parameter.)

  Own Id: OTP-8199

### 1.11 Reltool 0.5

#### Improvements and New Features

- The tool is still experimental. Feedback is appreciated.

  Major improvements of the target system generation has been performed. Now it is possible to generate a relocatable target system that does not need to be re-installed if it is moved to a new location. Archive files are automatically generated. A detailed specification of the target system can be generated without actually creating the target system. Relocatable escripts are put in the bin directory of the target system. etc. etc.

  Some new functions has been introduced in the reltool module: start/1, start_link/1, get_config/3, get_target_spec/1 and eval_target_spec/3.

  Some new configuration parameters has been introduced: profile, incl_sys_filters, excl_sys_filters, incl_app_filters, excl_app_filters, incl_archive_filters, excl_archive_filters, archive_opts, escript and relocatable.

  Some parameters have been obsoleted and given new semantics: incl_erts_dirs (incl_sys_filters), excl_erts_dirs (excl_sys_filters), incl_app_dirs (incl_app_filters), excl_app_dirs (excl_app_filters) and escripts (escript).

  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

  Own Id: OTP-7949

#### Known Bugs and Problems

- The application is experimental. Feedback is appreciated.

### 1.12 Reltool 0.2.2

#### Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions

- The tool crashed when rel, script and boot files were generated via the GUI. This has been fixed.

  Own Id: OTP-7999

### 1.13 Reltool 0.2.1

#### Improvements and New Features

- Minor GUI fixes

  Own Id: OTP-7840

### 1.14 Reltool 0.2

#### Improvements and new features

This is the first (experimental) release of Reltool.

#### Known Bugs and Problems

- The application is experimental.