Links:
FreeBSD Erlang wiki URL: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Erlang
Erlang/OTP language URL: https://erlang.org/
Elixir language URL: https://elixir-lang.org/
Gleam language URL: https://gleam.run/

Contact: FreeBSD Erlang mailing list <erlang@FreeBSD.org>

The Erlang runtime system, commonly known as the BEAM, provides a runtime that is used by a number of programming languages and applications in the FreeBSD ports collection.

Earlier this year, both Elixir and Erlang runtimes were brought up to date, but as separate ports, to enable porters and users to test applications side by side.

In Q3, the current runtimes have been brought across as defaults - this means that lang/elixir and lang/erlang are running as the latest releases of these superb programming languages and runtimes.

Older releases of lang/erlang-runtime{21,22,23} are still available as ports. The very old releases prior to OTP20 have been removed from the ports tree, as they are no longer supported upstream either.

Only newer OTP releases include the updated SSL application that will correctly validate cross-signed certificates, as used in Let’s Encrypt’s upcoming root certificate deprecations.

Further details on these changes are well documented at Erlang/OTP impact of DST Root CA X3 expiration and DST Root CA X3 expiration update

All of the NIF driver related ports that pull in other FreeBSD ports tree dependencies have been updated to match the newer lang/erlang release, and a number of ports that are not being updated in their upstream community, have therefore been marked as broken.

The Erlang team is planning to:

Additional testing and community contributions are welcome; please reach out on the mailing list, especially if you are able to help testing of specific port updates.