Akka.NET v1.1.2 Stable Release

1.1.2 September 21 2016

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.1

Akka.NET 1.1.2 introduces some exciting developments for Akka.NET users.

Mono Support and Improved IPV4/6 Configuration
First, Akka.NET 1.1.2 is the first release of Akka.NET to be production-certified for Mono. We've made some changes to Akka.Remote, in particular, to design it to work within some of the confines of Mono 4.4.2. For instance, we now support the following HOCON configuration value for the default Helios TCP transport:

 helios.tcp {
      # Omitted for brevity
      transport-protocol = tcp

      port = 2552

      hostname = ""

      public-hostname = ""

      dns-use-ipv6 = false
      enforce-ip-family = false
}

helios.tcp.enforce-ip-family is a new setting added to the helios.tcp transport designed to allow Akka.Remote to function in environments that don't support IPV6. This includes Mono 4.4.2, Windows Azure WebApps, and possibly others. When this setting is turned on and dns-use-ipv6 = false, all sockets will be forced to use IPV4 only instead of dual mode. If this setting is turned on and dns-use-ipv6 = true, all sockets opened by the Helios transport will be forced to use IPV6 instead of dual-mode.

Currently, as of Mono 4.4.2, this setting is turned on by default. Mono 4.6, when it's released, will allow dual-mode to work consistently again in the future.

We run the entire Akka.NET test suite on Mono and all modules pass.

Akka.Cluster Downing Providers
We've added a new feature to Akka.Cluster known as a "downing provider" - this is a pluggable strategy that you can configure via HOCON to specify how nodes in your Akka.NET cluster may automatically mark unreachable nodes as down.

Out of the box Akka.Cluster only provides the default "auto-down" strategy that's been included as part of Akka.Cluster in the past. However, you can now subclass the Akka.Cluster.IDowningProvider interface to implement your own strategies, which you can then load through HOCON:

# i.e.: akka.cluster.downing-provider-class = "Akka.Cluster.Tests.FailingDowningProvider, Akka.Cluster.Tests"
akka.cluster.downing-provider-class = "Fully-qualified-type-name, Assembly"

Other Fixes
We've also made significant improvements to the Akka.NET scheduler, more than doubling its performance and an significantly decreasing its memory allocation and garbage collection; updated Akka.Streams; fixed bugs in Akka.Cluster routers; and more. You can read the full list of changes in 1.1.2 here.

COMMITS	LOC+	LOC-	AUTHOR
16	3913	1440	Alex Valuyskiy
9	2323	467	Aaron Stannard
9	12568	2865	Marc Piechura
4	12	5	Michael Kantarovsky
3	381	196	Bartosz Sypytkowski
2	99	0	rogeralsing
2	359	17	Chris Constantin
2	29	6	Denys Zhuravel
2	11	11	Ismael Hamed
1	74	25	mrrd
1	5	2	Szymon Kulec
1	48	65	alexpantyukhin
1	3	2	Tamas Vajk
1	2	0	Julien Adam
1	121	26	andrey.leskov
1	1020	458	Sean Gilliam
1	1	1	Maciej Misztal

Akka.NET v1.1.1 Stable Release

1.1.1 July 15 2016

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.1

Akka.NET 1.1.1 addresses a number of bugs and issues reported by end users who made the upgrade from Akka.NET 1.0.* to Akka.NET 1.1.

DNS improvements
The biggest set of fixes included in Akka.NET 1.1.1 deal with how the Helios transport treats IPV6 addresses and performs DNS resolution. In Akka.NET 1.0.* Helios only supported IPV4 addresses and would use that as the default for DNS. In Akka.NET 1.1 we upgraded to using Helios 2.1, which supports both IPV6 and IPV4, but changed the default DNS resolution strategy to use IPV6. This caused some breakages for users who were using the public-hostname setting inside Helios in combination with a hostname value that used an IPV4 address.

This is now fixed - Akka.NET 1.1.1 uses Helios 2.1.2 which defaults back to an IPV4 DNS resolution strategy for both inbound and outbound connections. We've also fixed the way we encode and format IPV6 addresses into ActorPath and Address string representations (although we still have an issue with parsing IPV6 from HOCON.)

If you need to use IPV6 for DNS resolution, you can enable it by changing the following setting:

akka.remote.helios.tcp.dns-use-ipv6 = true

You can see the full list of Akka.NET 1.1.1 changes here.

Akka.NET v1.1.0 Stable Release

1.1.0 July 05 2016

Feature Release for Akka.NET

In Akka.NET 1.1 we introduce the following major changes:

• Akka.Cluster is no longer in beta; it is released as a fully stable module with a frozen API that is ready for production use.
• Akka.Remote now has a new Helios 2.1 transport that is up to 5x faster than the previous implementation and with tremendously lower memory consumption.
• The actor mailbox system has been replaced with the MailboxType system, which standardizes all mailbox implementations on a common core and instead allows for pluggable IMessageQueue implementations. This will make it easier to develop user-defined mailboxes and also has the added benefit of reducing all actor memory footprints by 34%.
• The entire router system has been updated, including support for new "controller" actors that can be used to adjust a router's routing table in accordance to external events (i.e. a router that adjusts whom it routes to based on CPU utilization, which will be implemented in Akka.Cluster.Metrics).

Full list of Akka.NET 1.1 fixes and changes

API Changes
There have been a couple of important API changes which will affect end-users upgrading from Akka.NET versions 1.0.*.

First breaking change deals with the PriorityMailbox base class, used by developers who need to prioritize specific message types ahead of others.

All user-defined instances of this type must now include the following constructor in order to work (using an example from Akka.NET itself:)

public class IntPriorityMailbox : UnboundedPriorityMailbox
{
    protected override int PriorityGenerator(object message)
    {
        return message as int? ?? Int32.MaxValue;
    }

    public IntPriorityMailbox(Settings settings, Config config) : base(settings, config)
    {
    }
}

There must be a MyMailboxType(Settings settings, Config config) constructor on all custom mailbox types going forward, or a ConfigurationException will be thrown when trying to instantiate an actor who uses the mailbox type.

Second breaking change deals with Akka.Cluster itself. In the past you could access all manner of data from the ClusterReadView class (accessed via the Cluster.ReadView property) - such as the addresses of all other members, who the current leader was, and so forth.

Going forward ClusterReadView is now marked as internal, but if you need access to any of this data you can access the Cluster.State property, which will return a CurrentClusterState object. This contains most of the same information that was previously available on ClusterReadView.

Akka.Streams
Another major part of Akka.NET 1.1 is the introduction of Akka.Streams, a powerful library with a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) that allows you to compose Akka.NET actors and workflows into streams of events and messages.

As of 1.1 Akka.Streams is now available as a beta module on NuGet.

We highly recommend that you read the Akka.Streams Quick Start Guide for Akka.NET as a place to get started.

Akka.Persistence.Query
A second beta module is also now available as part of Akka.NET 1.1, Akka.Persistence.Query - this module is built on top of Akka.Streams and Akka.Persistence and allows users to query ranges of information directly from their underlying Akka.Persistence stores for more powerful types of reads, aggregations, and more.

Akka.Persistence.Query is available for all SQL implementations of Akka.Persistence and will be added to our other Akka.Persistence plugins shortly thereafter.

Thank you!
Thanks for all of your patience and support as we worked to deliver this to you - it's been a tremendous amount of work but we really appreciate the help of all of the bug reports, Gitter questions, StackOverflow questions, and testing that our users have done on Akka.NET and specifically, Akka.Cluster over the past two years. We couldn't have done this without you.

23 contributors since release v1.0.8

COMMITS	LOC+	LOC-	AUTHOR
133	38124	7835	Silv3rcircl3
112	25826	10493	Chris Constantin
70	45449	11556	Bartosz Sypytkowski
44	22804	13971	Alex Valuyskiy
40	9811	6396	Aaron Stannard
12	9539	6619	Marc Piechura
6	1692	959	Sean Gilliam
4	448	0	alexpantyukhin
3	772	4	maxim.salamatko
3	3	382	Danthar
2	40	46	Vagif Abilov
1	91	103	rogeralsing
1	3	3	Jeff Cyr
1	219	44	Michael Kantarovsky
1	2	1	Juergen Hoetzel
1	19	8	tstojecki
1	187	2	Bart de Boer
1	178	0	Willem Meints
1	17	1	Kamil Wojciechowski
1	120	7	JeffCyr
1	11	7	corneliutusnea
1	1	1	Tamas Vajk
1	0	64	annymsMthd

Akka.NET v1.0.8 Stable Release

1.0.8 April 26 2016

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.0.7

Fixes an issue with the 1.0.7 release where the default settings for Akka.Persistence changed and caused potential breaking changes for Akka.Persistence users. Those changes have been reverted back to the same values as previous versions.

General fixes:

• Recovered default journal & snapshot store to default config
• EndpointRegistry fixes
• eliminated allocations with StandardOutWriter
• ClusterSingletonManager - settings update
• Implement spec for standard mailbox combinations in Akka.NET

Commit Stats for v1.0.8

COMMITS	LOC+	LOC-	AUTHOR
4	240	59	Aaron Stannard
3	268	1	Danthar
3	189	2810	Silv3rcircl3
2	204	4	Willem Meints
2	161	108	Bartosz Sypytkowski
2	101	24	Sean Gilliam
1	25	16	zbynek001

Akka.NET v1.0.7 Stable Release

1.0.7 April 4 2016

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.0.6
The biggest changes in Akka.NET 1.0.7 have been made to Akka.Persistence, which is now designed to match the final stable release version in JVM Akka 2.4. Akka.Persistence is on-target to exit beta and become a fully mature module as of Akka.NET 1.5, due in May/June timeframe.

A quick note about 1.5 - JSON.NET will be replaced by Wire as the default serializer going forward, so if you want to be forward-compatible with 1.5 you will need to switch to using Wire today. Learn how to switch to using Wire as the default Akka.NET serializer.

If you install 1.0.7 you may see the following warning appear:

NewtonSoftJsonSerializer has been detected as a default serializer.
It will be obsoleted in Akka.NET starting from version 1.5 in the favor of Wire
for more info visit: http://getakka.net/docs/Serialization#how-to-setup-wire-as-default-serializer
If you want to suppress this message set HOCON {configPath} config flag to on.

This release also fixes some issues with the Cluster.Tools and Cluster.Sharding NuGet packages, which weren't versioned correctly in previous releases.

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Core

• #1667
• Akka IO: ByteIterator and ByteStringbuilder bug fixes
• Hocon Tripple quoted text - Fixes #1687
• Downgrade System.Collections.Immutable to 1.1.36
• Unify immutable collections - Akka.NET core now depends on System.Collections.Immutable.
• #1694 Added safe check in InboxActor when receive timeout is already expired
• Bugfix: DeadLetter filter with Type parameter should call IsInstanceOfType with the correct argument
• Akka.IO bind failed must notify bindCommander of failure
• ReceiveActor: Replaced Receive(Func<T, Task> handler) by ReceiveAsync(...)
• External ActorSystem for Testkit event filters.
• Fixed the ScatterGatherFirstCompleted router logic
• Issue #1766 - Lazy evaluation of ChildrenContainer.Children and ChildrenContainer.Stats
• [Dispatch] Support for 'mailbox-requirement' and 'mailbox-type' in dispatcher config
• Fixed within timeout for routers in default configuration
• Default MailboxType optimization
• Warning about JSON.NET obsolete in v1.5
• Issue #1828 Implemented NobodySurrogate

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Remote, Akka.Cluster, Et al

• Add the default cluster singleton config as a top-level fallback.
• Change ShardState to a class
• Cluster.Sharding: Take snapshots when configured
• added remote metrics
• Added a new argument to the MultiNodeTestRunner to filter specs
• close #1758 made Akka.Cluster.Tools and Akka.Cluster.Sharding use correct assembly version info and nuget dependencies
• Akka.Remote EndpointWriter backoff bugfix
• Akka.Cluster.TestKit (internal use only)
• Cluster.Tools.Singleton: Member.UpNumber fix

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Persistence

• Made JournalEntry.Payload an object and AtLeastOnceDeliverySemantic public
• Akka.Persistence - update code base to akka JVM v2.4
• Ensure internal stash is unstashed on writes after recovery
• Wrap user stash to avoid confusion between PersistentActor.UnstashAll and PersistentActor.Stash.UnstashAll
• Fixes initialization of LocalSnapshotStore directory
• Fixed global ActorContext in SqlJournal

Commit Stats for v1.0.7

COMMITS	LOC+	LOC-	AUTHOR
12	1718	2213	Aaron Stannard
11	2187	2167	Silv3rcircl3
7	433	75	JeffCyr
6	2	1127	Danthar
6	10383	3054	Chris Constantin
3	510	25	maxim.salamatko
3	5	3	Christopher Martin
2	53	65	rogeralsing
2	50	1	mukulsinghsaini
2	2738	2035	Sean Gilliam
2	25	4	Bartosz Sypytkowski
2	2	2	utcnow
2	14	13	zbynek001
2	130	126	annymsMthd
1	58	0	Denis Kostikov
1	48	43	voltcode
1	213	66	Alex Koshelev
1	2	2	Tamas Vajk
1	2	2	Marc Piechura
1	2	1	Juergen Hoetzel
1	19	8	tstojecki
1	13	13	Willie Ferguson
1	1	1	ravengerUA

Akka.NET v1.0.6 Stable Release

1.0.6 January 18 2016

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.0.5
This patch consists of many bug fixes, performance improvements, as well as the addition of two brand new alpha modules for Akka.Cluster users.

Akka.Cluster.Tools and Akka.Cluster.Sharding
The biggest part of this release is the addition of Akka.Cluster.Tools and Akka.Cluster.Sharding, both of which are available now as pre-release packages on NuGet.

PM> Install-Package Akka.Cluster.Tools -pre

and

PM> Install-Package Akka.Cluster.Sharding -pre

Respectively, these two packages extend Akka.Cluster to do the following:

1. Distributed pub/sub (Akka.Cluster.Tools)
2. ClusterClient - subscribe to changes in cluster availability without actually being part of the cluster itself. (Akka.Cluster.Tools)
3. ClusterSingleton - guarantee a single instance of a specific actor throughout the cluster. (Akka.Cluster.Tools)
4. Sharding - partition data into durable stores (built on top of Akka.Persistence) in a manner that is fault-tolerant and recoverable across thecluster. (Akka.Cluster.Sharding)

Check out the documentation for more details!

• http://getakka.net/docs/clustering/cluster-tools
• http://getakka.net/docs/clustering/cluster-sharding

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Core

• Fix incorrect serialization of Unicode characters in NewtonSoftJsonSerializer
• Fixed: Supervisorstrategy does not preserve stacktrace
• added initial performance specs using NBench
• Add wire back as contrib package + Serialization TestKit
• Implemented the RegisterOnTermination feature.
• Increased performance of DedicatedThreadPool
• #1605 updated Google.ProtocolBuffers to 2.4.1.555
• Clear current message - fixes #1609
• Rewrite of the AtomicReference
• Implemented WhenTerminated and Terminate
• Implemented StartTime and Uptime
• API Diff with fixed Approval file
• Fixed: NullReferenceException in Akka.Util.Internal.Collections.ImmutableAvlTreeBase`2.RotateLeft

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Remote & Akka.Cluster
It should be noted that we've improved the throughput from Akka.NET v1.0.5 to 1.0.6 by a factor of 8

• Akka.Cluster.Tools & Akka.Cluster.Sharding with tests and examples
• Added UntrustedSpec
• Akka.Remote Performance - String.Format logging perf fix
• Remoting system upgrade
• PublicHostname defaults to IPAddress.Any when hostname is blank
• Removes code that overrides OFF log level with WARNING.
• fixes issue with Helios message ordering
• Fixed: Actor does not receive "Terminated" message if remoting is used and it is not monitored actor's parent

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Persistence

• Fixed racing conditions on sql-based snapshot stores
• Fix for race conditions in presistence plugins
• Fix #1522 Ensure extensions and persistence plugins are only registered/created once

A special thanks to all of our contributors for making this happen!
18 contributors since release v1.0.5

COMMITS	LOC+	LOC-	AUTHOR
22	3564	28087	Aaron Stannard
15	1710	1303	rogeralsing
6	569	95	Silv3rcircl3
6	53594	4417	Bartosz Sypytkowski
5	1786	345	Sean Gilliam
3	786	159	maxim.salamatko
2	765	277	JeffCyr
2	44	53	Chris Constantin
2	14	2	Simon Anderson
1	84	4	Bart de Boer
1	6051	27	danielmarbach
1	6	2	tstojecki
1	3	5	Ralf1108
1	27	0	Andrew Skotzko
1	2	2	easuter
1	2	1	Danthar
1	182	0	derwasp
1	179	0	Onat Yiğit Mercan

Akka.NET v1.0.5 Stable Release

1.0.5 December 3 2015

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.0.4
This release is a collection of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and general improvements contributed by 29 individual contributors.

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Core

• Bugfix: Make the Put on the SimpleDnsCache idempotent
• Add CircuitBreaker Initial based on akka 2.0.5
• Fix for receive timeout in async await actor
• akka-io: fixed High CPU load using the Akka.IO TCP server
• akka-io: Stop select loop on idle
• Serialization fixes
• Fix issue #1301 - inprecise resizing of resizable routers
• Stashing now checks message equality by reference
• rewrote ActorPath.TryParseAddrss to now test Uris by try / catch and use Uri.TryCreate instead
• Port EventBusUnsubscribers
• Add optional PipeTo completion handlers
• Akka context props output to Serilog

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Remote, Akka.Cluster

• MultiNode tests can now be skipped by specifying a SkipReason
• Akka.Remote: Discard msg if payload size > max allowed.
• Throw TypeLoadException when an actor type or dependency cannot be found in a remote actor deploy scenario
• MultiNode Test Visualizer
• Fix for Akka.Cluster.Routing.ClusterRouterGroupSettings Mono Linux issue
• Added RemoteDeploymentWatcher
• Akka IO Transport: framing support
• #1443 fix for cluster shutdown

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Persistence

• Fixes the NullReferenceException in #1235 and appears to adhere to the practice of including an addres with the serialized binary.
• Port Finite State Machine DSL to Akka.Persistence
• Become and BecomeStacked for ReceivePersistentActor
• Persistent actor stops on recovery failures
• Fixed: data races inside sql journal engine
• fix sqlite.conf and readme
• #1416 created ReceiveActor implementation of AtLeastOnceDeliveryActor base class

A special thanks to all of our contributors, organized below by the number of changes made:

23369 5258 18111 Aaron Stannard
18827 16329 2498 Bartosz Sypytkowski
11994 9496 2498 Steffen Forkmann
6031 4637 1394 maxim.salamatko
1987 1667 320 Graeme Bradbury
1556 1149 407 Sean Gilliam
1118 1118 0 moliver
706 370 336 rogeralsing
616 576 40 Marek Kadek
501 5 496 Alex Koshelev
377 269 108 Jeff Cyr
280 208 72 willieferguson
150 98 52 Christian Palmstierna
85 63 22 Willie Ferguson
77 71 6 Emil Ingerslev
66 61 5 Grover Jackson
60 39 21 Alexander Pantyukhin
56 33 23 Uladzimir Makarau
55 54 1 rdavisau
51 18 33 alex-kondrashov
42 26 16 Silv3rcircl3
36 30 6 evertmulder
33 19 14 Filip Malachowicz
13 11 2 Suhas Chatekar
7 6 1 tintoy
4 2 2 Jonathan
2 1 1 neekgreen
2 1 1 Christopher Martin
2 1 1 Artem Borzilov

Akka.NET v1.0.4 Stable Release

1.0.4 August 07 2015

Maintenance release for Akka.NET v1.0.3

Akka.IO
This release introduces some major new features to Akka.NET, including Akka.IO - a new set of capabilities built directly into the Akka NuGet package that allow you to communicate with your actors directly via TCP and UDP sockets from external (non-actor) systems.

If you want to see a really cool example of Akka.IO in action, look at this sample that shows off how to use the Telnet commandline to interact directly with Akka.NET actors.

Akka.Persistence.MongoDb and Akka.Persistence.Sqlite
Two new flavors of Akka.Persistence support are now available. You can install them via the commandline!

PM> Install-Package Akka.Persistence.MongoDb -pre

and

PM> Install-Package Akka.Persistence.Sqlite -pre

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Core

• F# API - problem with discriminated union serialization
• Fix Null Sender issue
• Outdated FsPickler version in Akka.FSharp can lead to runtime errors when other FsPickler-dependent packages are installed
• Add default Ask timeout to HOCON configuration
• Remote watching is repeated
• RemoteDaemon bug, not removing children
• HOCON include support
• Replace SystemNanoTime with MonotonicClock

Akka.DI.StructureMap
We now have support for the StructureMap dependency injection framework out of the box. You can install it here!

PM> Install-Package Akka.DI.StructureMap

Akka.NET v1.0.3 Stable Release

Bugfix release for Akka.NET v1.0.2.

This release addresses an issue with Akka.Persistence.SqlServer and Akka.Persistence.PostgreSql where both packages were missing a reference to Akka.Persistence.Sql.Common.

In Akka.NET v1.0.3 we've packaged Akka.Persistence.Sql.Common into its own NuGet package and referenced it in the affected packages.

Akka.NET v1.0.2 Stable Release

1.0.2 June 2 2015

Bugfix release for Akka.NET v1.0.1.

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Core

• Routers seem ignore supervision strategy
• Replaced DateTime.Now with DateTime.UtcNow/MonotonicClock
• DedicatedThreadScheduler
• Add ability to specify scheduler implementation in configuration
• Added generic extensions to EventStream subscribe/unsubscribe.
• Convert null to NoSender.
• Supervisor strategy bad timeouts
• Updated Pigeon.conf throughput values
• Add PipeTo for non-generic Tasks for exception handling

Fixes & Changes - Akka.NET Dependency Injection

• Added Extensions methods to ActorSystem and ActorContext to make DI more accessible
• DIActorProducer fixes
• closes akkadotnet/akka.net#1020 structuremap dependency injection

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Remote and Akka.Cluster

• Fixing up cluster rejoin behavior
• Added dispatcher fixes for remote and cluster
• Fixes to ClusterRouterGroup
• Two actors are created by remote deploy using Props.WithDeploy

Fixes & Changes - Akka.Persistence

• Renamed GuaranteedDelivery classes to AtLeastOnceDelivery
• Changes in Akka.Persistence SQL backend
• PostgreSQL persistence plugin for both event journal and snapshot store
• Cassandra persistence plugin

New Features:

Akka.TestKit.XUnit2
Akka.NET now has support for XUnit 2.0! You can install Akka.TestKit.XUnit2 via the NuGet commandline:

PM> Install-Package Akka.TestKit.XUnit2

Akka.Persistence.PostgreSql and Akka.Persistence.Cassandra
Akka.Persistence now has two additional concrete implementations for PostgreSQL and Cassandra! You can install either of the packages using the following commandline:

Akka.Persistence.PostgreSql Configuration Docs

PM> Install-Package Akka.Persistence.PostgreSql

Akka.Persistence.Cassandra Configuration Docs

PM> Install-Package Akka.Persistence.Cassandra

Akka.DI.StructureMap
Akka.NET's dependency injection system now supports StructureMap! You can install Akka.DI.StructureMap via the NuGet commandline:

PM> Install-Package Akka.DI.StructureMap