Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2 released!

NewsBot · 4 March 2026 16:22

Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2 has been released.

Overall, the compiler finds more bugs, for free, and it has never been faster:

Infers types across clauses, finding more bugs and dead code

Compiles ~10% faster and has a new interpreted mode (up to 5x faster, scales to the number of cores). For more information, follow the benchmarks

Modifying a struct definition recompiles fewer files (it no longer requires files that only pattern match or update structs to recompile)

1. Enhancements

Elixir

[Code] Add module_definition: :interpreted option to Code which allows module definitions to be evaluated instead of compiled. In some applications/architectures, this can lead to drastic improvements to compilation times. Note this does not affect the generated .beam file, which will have the same performance/behaviour as before

[Code] Make module purging opt-in and move temporary module deletion to the background to speed up compilation times

[Integer] Add Integer.popcount/1

[Kernel] Move struct validation in patterns and updates to type checker, this means adding and remove struct fields will cause fewer files to be recompiled

[Kernel] Add type inference across clauses. For example, if one clause says x when is_integer(x), then the next clause may no longer be an integer

[Kernel] Detect and warn on redundant clauses

[List] Add List.first!/1 and List.last!/1

Add Software Bill of Materials guide to the Documentation

Mix

[mix compile] Add module_definition: :interpreted option to Code which allows module definitions to be evaluated instead of compiled. In some applications/architectures, this can lead to drastic improvements to compilation times. Note this does not affect the generated .beam file, which will have the same performance/behaviour as before

[mix deps] Parallelize dep lock status checks during `deps.load…

Link: Release v1.20.0-rc.2 · elixir-lang/elixir · GitHub