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Learn about Mailboxer, a prototype static analysis tool designed to detect communication errors in Erlang codebases through this 24-minute conference presentation from the Erlang 2025 workshop. Discover how this innovative tool addresses the critical challenge of communication errors in distributed software by implementing mailbox types, a novel behavioral type system specifically designed for actor-based programming languages. Explore the sophisticated type-checking algorithm that enables Mailboxer to identify unreceived messages, certain types of deadlocks, protocol violations, and message tag typos at compile time, potentially reducing development and debugging time significantly. Understand how mailbox type annotations can be used to embed and document process communication patterns while scaling to handle multiple protocols and common programming paradigms. Examine the theoretical foundations and practical applications of this technology, which extends beyond Erlang to other mailbox-based actor languages including Elixir and Scala/Akka. Gain insights into the STARDUST project's research contributions and see demonstrations of how this freestanding checker can be integrated into existing Erlang development workflows to improve code reliability and maintainability.
