[jboss-dev] JGroups 2.6 beta 1 and 2.5.1 released

Thu Sep 20 08:53:30 EDT 2007

I felt like releasing 2 JGroups releases in 1 day, which I've never done 
before... :-)

2.6 beta 1 is mainly to allow JBossCache and JBoss AS 5 to include it 
and possibly use the new JOIN&State transfer API. Although only beta-1, 
is *very* stable (only 1 out of 600 core tests fails !). No major new 
functionality will be added until we go GA, only bug fixes.

I will branch off when GA is relased, so patch releases (2.6.1, 2.6.2 
etc) can easily be added to AS 5.

2.5.1 contains some important bug fixes for 2.5 GA (AUTH, VIEW_SYNC), 
and is completely backward compatible to 2.5.

I also updated repository.jboss.org with the 2 new releases.
Enjoy !

Release Notes JGroups 2.6 beta 1
=========================

Version: $Id: ReleaseNotes-2.6.txt,v 1.2 2007/09/20 08:26:57 belaban Exp $
Author: Bela Ban

JGroups 2.6 is still API-backwards compatible with previous versions 
(down to 2.2.5).

Below is a summary (with links to the detailed description) of the major 
new features.

Join and state transfer
-----------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-236]

We added another connect() method in JChannel, which combines joining a 
cluster and fetching the state from the
coordinator into one method. This is especially useful when we have 
FLUSH in the stack; thus we only have to use 1 rather
than 2 (1 for JOIN, 1 for state transfer) flush phases.

Improved ReplicatedHashMap
--------------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-581]

ReplicatedHashMap was converted to use generics, and 
java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap. It therefore supports 4 new
methods putIfAbsent(), remove() and the two replace() methods.
Developers can choose whether to use asynchronous or synchronous 
replication, and also pick the timeout for synchronous
calls.
This class supercedes ReplicatedHashtable and DistributedHashtable, 
which will be removed in version 3.0.

Reincarnation issue
-------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-130]

Using the GMS.reject_join_from_existing_member (default=false) property, 
we can reject a JOIN request from a reincarnated
member X who crashed, but has not yet been removed (e.g. due to a high 
timeout in FD). The member would have to retry,
and would only succeed when (the old) X has been excluded from the cluster.
For shunned members who use AUTO_RECONNECT, we loop until this is true 
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-584].

New transport property 'bind_interface'
---------------------------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-579]

This can be used when multipler network interfaces have the *same* IP 
address, to define the interface to get used, e.g
bind_addr="192.168.2.5" bind_interface="eth1". Useful e.g. with IP 
Bonding on Linux.

Unicast bundling can be disabled at the transport level
-------------------------------------------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-429]

When dealing with latency sensitive applications, we may want to disable 
message bundling for *responses* (but not for
requests, as requests might carry large payloads). This can be done via 
the enable_unicast_bundling (default=true)
property.

RpcDispatcher can now filter responses as they arrive
------------------------------------------------------
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-518]

There's a new callRemoteMethods() method taking an RspFilter, which is 
called whenever a response has been received,
allowing a request to return based on a condition (e.g. the first non 
null return value) before all responses
have been received.

Manual
------
The manual is online at 
http://www.jgroups.org/javagroupsnew/docs/manual/html/index.html

Performance
-----------
Links to performance tuning: 
http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=PerfTuning

Bug fixes
---------
AUTH: bug in 2.5 which caused AUTH to fail on second and subsequent JOIN 
attempts *if* the first
attempt was rejected by AUTH.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-577]

VIEW_SYNC: there was a regression in 2.5, which causes VIEW_SYNC 
messages to get dropped.
Note that this bug didn't occur in 2.4.x.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-586]

X.509 token not marshalled correctly. This affects ENCRYPT.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-576]

The complete list of features and bug fixes can be found at 
http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP.

Bela Ban, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland
Vladimir Blagojevic, Toronto, Canada

Sept 2007

Release Notes JGroups 2.5.1
===========================

Version: $Id: ReleaseNotes-2.5.1.txt,v 1.1.2.2 2007/09/20 11:44:00 
belaban Exp $
Author: Bela Ban

JGroups 2.5.1 is a patch release for 2.5 GA. It contains no new 
functionality, but only bug fixes.

Manual
------
The manual is online at 
http://www.jgroups.org/javagroupsnew/docs/manual/html/index.html

Bug fixes
---------

AUTH: bug in 2.5 which caused AUTH to fail on second and subsequent JOIN 
attempts *if* the first
attempt was rejected by AUTH.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-577]

VIEW_SYNC: there was a regression in 2.5, which causes VIEW_SYNC 
messages to get dropped.
Note that this bug didn't occur in 2.4.x.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-586]

X.509 token not marshalled correctly. This affects ENCRYPT.
[http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP-576]

The complete list of features and bug fixes can be found at 
http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JGRP.

Bela Ban, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, Sept 2007

-- 
Bela Ban
Lead JGroups / Clustering Team
JBoss - a division of Red Hat