Erlang/OTP                                               October 15, 2002


LAST MINUTE INFORMATION -- Release of Erlang 5.2/OTP R9B


1.      GENERAL
        -------

1.1     Installation Guide

        The installation guide can be found in

                <inst-root>/doc/installation_guide/part_frame.html

1.2     Java

        The Java sources where compiled using JDK 1.2.2.

1.3     Disk space

        An installation of Erlang/OTP needs approximately 110 MB of
        disk space.

1.4     The package contains HTML documentation. You can also get this
        documentation preformatted for printing in PDF format from

            http://www.erlang.se/doc/

        This site also contains HTML documentation for older releases
        as a reference.

1.5     You don't need to recompile your Erlang object file (BEAM
        files) that was compiled with the R7B or R8B compiler but
        doing so may give you some performance improvements.
	
1.6 	This release differs from earlier releases in that it
	contains several unsupported features for tryout. Most notably
	the sun-sparc-solaris 32 bit version contains support for HiPE native
	code compiling and loading. All platforms except Windows also contain 
	an emulator using a shared (global) heap. Running 'erl -shared' 
	starts this emulator. Note that no support is given on HiPE or 
	the shared heap emulator, they are delivered for testing purpouses 
	and should not be used in a production environment. Information about
	HiPE can be found at this site: http://www.csd.uu.se/projects/hipe/


2.      KNOWN BUGS AND PROBLEMS
        -----------------------

	In the 64bit sparc-sun-solaris release, the following applications 
	are still not converted to the 64bit environment:

	ic (the libraries)
	ssl
	erl_interface
	crypto
	odbc

	The 32bit versions can in most cases be used as a replacement.

3.      NOTES ABOUT THE SOLARIS VERSION
        -------------------------------

3.1	There are two sun-sparc-solaris versions, one for 32bit
	environment and one built for a 64bit environment (see "KNOWN BUGS 
	AND PROBLEMS" above). If one hasn't special need for the 64bit 
	address space, the 32bit version is in all senses to be preferred. 
	The 64bit version consumes roughly twice the amount of memory and 
	is not performing as well as the 32bit version in terms of speed. 

3.2	HiPE native code loading is enabled by default, but compiling to 
	native code is not supported in the sense that our support department 
	can give no help on subjects due to native code compiling. 

4.      NOTES ABOUT THE WIN32 VERSION
        -----------------------------

4.1     Some graphical tools still have problems on Windows. Pman may not 
	start at the first attempt. Some other tools may give some error
        messages.


5.      NOTES ABOUT THE VXWORKS VERSION
        -------------------------------

5.1	The platform VxWorks is discontinued in the sense that only the 
	libraries (erl_interface and ic's libraries) are supported. Running
	the erlang emulator on VxWorks is still possible but it's no longer
	maintained. The VxWorks release is still packaged as a full release
	and the emulator runs, but no support will be available for anything
	but the communication libraries. 

6       NOTES ABOUT THE LINUX VERSIONS
        -----------------------------

6.1     The following linux distributions/version combinations are supported 
	and tested:
	
	i386: 	RedHat 7.1 x86 updated to kernel 2.4.5, glibc 2.2.2, and 
		jdk 1.3.1_01. To run this Java version with this 
		configuration you also need an older library installed 
		with the RPM "compat-libstdc++-6.2-2.9.0.14.i386.rpm".
	
	Powerpc:Montavista Linux 2.1 Kernel 2.4.17, glibc 2.2.3, jdk 1.2.2.
		(Also tested with Kernel 2.4.18 and glibc 2.2.5)

	Sparc:	Kernel 2.4.19, libc 2.1.3, jdk 1.3.0.


7.      APPLICATIONS NOTES
        ------------------

7.1     The 'comet' application is no longer part of the Erlang/OTP 
	distribution. It's still available as an unsopported 
	user contribution.


8.      MORE INFORMATION
        ----------------

	Commercial customers please visit http://www.erlang.se to find 
	releases and more information. Commercial support is given through
	support@erlang.ericsson.se.

	Open source users please visit http://www.erlang.org and direct 
	problems to the open source community through the mailing list. 



