2.0.5 release preparations

[akarnokd]

Version 2.0.5 - January 27, 2017 (Maven)

The most notable enhancement of this version is the inclusion of the ParallelFlowable API that allows parallel execution of a few select operators such as map, filter, concatMap, flatMap, collect, reduce and so on. Note that is a parallel mode for Flowable (a sub-domain specific language) instead of a new reactive base type.

Consequently, several typical operators such as take, skip and many others are not available and there is no ParallelObservable because backpressure is essential in not flooding the internal queues of the parallel operators as by expectation, we want to go parallel because the processing of the data is slow on one thread.

The easiest way of entering the parallel world is by using Flowable.parallel:

ParallelFlowable<Integer> source = Flowable.range(1, 1000).parallel();

By default, the parallelism level is set to the number of available CPUs (Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()) and the prefetch amount from the sequential source is set to Flowable.bufferSize() (128). Both can be specified via overloads of parallel().

ParallelFlowable follows the same principles of parametric asynchrony as Flowable does, therefore, parallel() on itself doesn't introduce the asynchronous consumption of the sequential source but only prepares the parallel flow; the asynchrony is defined via the runOn(Scheduler) operator.

ParallelFlowable<Integer> psource = source.runOn(Schedulers.io());

The parallelism level (ParallelFlowable.parallelism()) doesn't have to match the parallelism level of the Scheduler. The runOn operator will use as many Scheduler.Worker instances as defined by the parallelized source. This allows ParallelFlowable to work for CPU intensive tasks via Schedulers.computation(), blocking/IO bound tasks through Schedulers.io() and unit testing via TestScheduler. You can specify the prefetch amount on runOn as well.

Once the necessary parallel operations have been applied, you can return to the sequential Flowable via the ParallelFlowable.sequential() operator.

Flowable<Integer> result = psource.filter(v -> v % 3 == 0).map(v -> v * v).sequential();

Note that sequential doesn't guarantee any ordering between values flowing through the parallel operators.

For further details, please visit the wiki page about Parallel flows. (New content will be added there as time permits.)

API enhancements

• Pull 4955: add sample() overload that can emit the very last buffered item.
• Pull 4966: add strict() operator for strong Reactive-Streams conformance
• Pull 4967: add subjects for Single, Maybe and Completable
• Pull 4972: Improve compose() generics
• Pull 4973: Add Completable.hide()
• Pull 4974: add Flowable.parallel() and parallel operators
• Pull 5002: Add scheduler creation factories

Bugfixes

• Pull 4957: fix LambdaObserver calling dispose when terminating
• Pull 4962: fix takeUntil() other triggering twice
• Pull 4970: fix withLatestFrom null checks, lifecycle
• Pull 4982: fix Observable.concatMapEager bad logic for immediate scalars.
• Pull 4984: fix cross-boundary invalid fusion with observeOn, flatMap & zip
• Pull 4987: Make Observable.combineLatest consistent with Flowable, fix early termination cancelling the other sources and document empty source case
• Pull 4992: A.flatMapB to eagerly check for cancellations before subscribing
• Pull 5005: ExecutorScheduler.scheduleDirect to report isDisposed on task completion

Other

• Pull 4971: Add @CheckReturnValue to create() methods of Subjects + Processors
• Pull 4980: Update Copyright to 'RxJava Contributors'
• Pull 4990: Update marble diagrams for sample() overloads, Maybe and Maybe.switchIfEmpty()
• Pull 5015: Fix Reactive-Streams dependency to be compile in the library's POM
• Pull 5020: option to fail for using blockingX on the computation/single scheduler

[davidmoten]

👍 By the way do you want reviews of these lists?

[akarnokd]

No need for that.

[akarnokd]

Updated with intro to parallel(). Let me know if more details are needed for the change log.

[akarnokd]

Closing via 2.0.5.