Erlang/OTP 24

This release of Erlang/OTP can be built from source or installed using pre-built packages for your OS or third-party tools (such as kerl or asdf).

Erlang/OTP 24 highlight blog post

docker run -it erlang:24

Erlang/OTP 24.3.3
View on github.com

Highlights

compiler

  • The compiler will now inline funs that are used only once immediately after their definition.
  • Compiler warnings and errors now include column numbers in addition to line numbers.
  • Variables bound between the keywords 'try' and 'of' can now be used in the clauses following the 'of' keyword (that is, in the success case when no exception was raised).
  • Generators in list and binary comprehensions will now raise a {bad_generator,Generator} exception if the generator has an incorrect type Similarly, when a filter does not evaluate to a boolean, a {bad_filter,Filter} exception will be raised.
  • Warnings for expressions whose result was ignored that could be suppressed by using the anonymous variable '_' can now be suppressed with a variable beginning with '_'.
  • Selective receive optimization will now be applied much more often. The new recv_opt_info compile flag can be used to print diagnostics relating to this optimization. You can read more about the selective receive optimization in the Efficiency Guide.

erts, kernel, stdlib

  • hex encoding and decoding functions added in the binary module

  • The BeamAsm JIT-compiler has been added to Erlang/OTP and will give a significant performance boost for many applications. The JIT-compiler is enabled by default on most x86 64-bit platforms that have a C++ compiler that can compile C++17. To verify that a JIT enabled emulator is running you can use erlang:system_info(emu_flavor).

  • A compatibility adaptor for gen_tcp to use the new socket API has been implemented (gen_tcp_socket).
  • Extended error information for failing BIF calls as proposed in EEP 54 has been implemented.
  • Process aliases as outlined by EEP 53 has been introduced.
  • Implementation of EEP 56 in supervisor. It adds the concept of significant children as well as the auto_shutdown supervisor flag. See the supervisor manual page for more information.

ftp

  • Add support for FTPES (explicit FTP over TLS).

ssl

  • Make TLS handshakes in Erlang distribution concurrent.
  • TLS connections now support EdDSA certificates.

wx

  • The application has been completely rewritten in order to use wxWidgets version 3 as its base.
  • Added support for wxWebView.

edoc

  • EDoc is now capable of emitting EEP-48 doc chunks. This means that, with some configuration, community projects can now provide documentation for shell_docs the same way that OTP libraries did since OTP 23.0.

For more details about new features and potential incompatibilities see

  • https://erlang.org/download/OTP-24.0.README