Release OTP 21.0 Release Candidate 2 · erlang/otp

OTP 21 Release Candidate 2

This is the second of two planned release candidates before the OTP 21 release.

The intention whit this release is that you as users try it and give us feedback

Erlang/OTP 21 is a new major release with new features, improvements as well as incompatibilities.
Potential Incompatibilities

All Corba applications are now moved from the OTP repository
A new Corba repository will be created https://github.com/erlang
New applications ftp and tftp, moved from inets
ssl no longer supports 3_DES cipher suites or RSA-key exchange cipher suites by default
Erlang:monitor on a primitive node (erl_interface, jinterface, etc) will no longer fail with badarg exception. Instead a monitor will be created, but it will only supervise the connection to the node.

Highlights
Erts:

Enhanced IO scalability
Support for usage of distribution controller processes for alternative transports, routing etc
compact instructions on 64bit systems for code below 4GB 20% less memory for loaded code
Rewrite of the efile-driver with NIFs and "Dirty schedulers" resulting in faster file operations
non-smp VM removed
link and monitor optimized for scalability
os:getenv/putenv now work on thread-safe emulation. No longer in sync with libc getenv(3). Manual synchronization will be needed.

Compiler:

Misc compiler optimizations including contributions from the Elixir team resulting in 10% improvements in benchmarks
"Tuple calls" have been removed from the run-time system.
Code such as f({ok, Val}) -> {ok, Val} is now automatically rewritten to f({ok, Val} = Tuple) -> Tuple. this reduces code size, execution time, and removed GC pressure.
More information in stacktrace from a number of operators
erlang:get_stacktrace/0 deprecated to be replaced with try ... catch C:R:Stacktrace -> ...
Creation of small maps with literal keys optimized.

Security:

DTLS support in SSL
Enhanced support for distribution over TLS
"unsecure" ciphers removed from defaults in SSL and SSH.
A new option value defined to facilitate implementing exec servers. Old option kept for compatibility, but now gives errors on stderror.

Standard libraries:

New API for logging, logger
New uri_string module for parsing URIs according to "The standard"
New function lists:search(list,fun/1) -> {ok, Value} | false
Changed default behaviour of .erlang loading. escript, erlc, dialyzer and typer no longer load an .erlang at all.

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