As stated earlier, instruction restart_new_emulator causes the emulator to be restarted with new versions of ERTS>, Kernel, STDLIB, and SASL. However, all other applications do at startup run their old versions in this new emulator. This is usually no problem, but every now and then incompatible changes occur to the core applications, which can cause trouble in this setting. Such incompatible changes (when functions are removed) are normally preceded by a deprecation over two major releases. To ensure that your application is not crashed by an incompatible change, always remove any call to deprecated functions as soon as possible.