v1.5.3

Improvements since 1.5.2.

• CodeGen: support builds which use reference assemblies (#3753)

v2.0.0-beta1

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.5.2

• Breaking changes

  • Most packages are now targetting .NET Standard 2.0 (which mean they can be used from either .NET Framework or .NET Core 2.0).
    • These packages still target .NET Framework 4.6.1: Microsoft.Orleans.TestingSiloHost, Microsoft.Orleans.ServiceFabric, Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansTelemetryConsumers.Counters, Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansTelemetryConsumers.NewRelic and the PowerShell module.
  • Deprecated the Orleans Logging infrastructure.
    • Orleans now uses the Microsoft.Extensions.Logging abstractions package (MEL for short from now on).
    • The legacy Orleans' Logger abstraction is preserved as obsolete for backwards compatibility in a new Microsoft.Orleans.Logging.Legacy package, but it's just a wrapper that forwards to ILogger from MEL. It is recommended that you migrate to it directly.
    • This package also contains a provider for the new MEL abstraction that allows forwarding to ILogConsumer, in case the end-user has a custom implementation of that legacy interface. Similarly, it is recommended to rewrite the custom log consumer or telemetry consumer and implement ILoggerProvider from MEL instead.
    • The APM methods (TrackXXX) from Logger were separated into a new ITelemetryProducer interface, and it's currently only being used by Orleans to publish metrics. #3390
    • Logging configuration is no longer parsed from the XML configuration, as the user would have to configure MEL instead.
  • Created a Microsoft.Orleans.Core.Abstractions nuget package and moved/refactored several types into it. We plan to rev and do breaking changes to this package very infrequently.
  • NuGet package names were preserved for beta1, but several DLL filenames were renamed.
  • Runtime code generation was removed (Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansCodeGenerator package). You should use build-time codegen by installing the Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansCodeGenerator.Build package in the grain implementations' and interfaces' projects.
  • SiloHostBuilder and ClientBuilder are intended to replace the previous ways of initializing Orleans. They are not at 100% parity with ClusterConfiguration and ClientConfiguration so these are still required for beta1, but they will be eventually deprecated.
  • Note that when using SiloHostBuilder and ClientBuilder, Orleans will no longer scan every single assembly loaded in the AppDomain by default, and instead you need to be explicit to which ones you use by calling the AddApplicationPartXXX methods from each of the builders.
  • Silo membership (and its counterpart Gateway List Provider on the client) and MessagingOptions can be configured using the utilities in the Microsoft.Extensions.Options package. Before the final 2.0.0 release, the plan is to have everything moved to that configuration infrastructure.
  • Upgraded several dependencies to external packages that are .NET Standard compatible
  • Add support for Scoped services. This means that each grain activation gets its own scoped service provider, and Orleans registers IGrainActivationContext that can be injected into Transient or Scoped service to get access to activation specific information and lifecycle events #2856 #3270 #3385
  • Propagate failures in Grain.OnActivateAsync to callers #3315
  • Removed obsolete GrainState class #3167

• Non-breaking improvements

  • Build-time codegen and silo startup have been hugely improved so that the expensive type discovery happens during build, but at startup it is very fast. This can remove several seconds to startup time, which can be especially noticeable when using TestCluster to spin up in-memory clusters all the time #3518
  • Add commit hash information in published assemblies #3575
  • First version of Transactions support (still experimental, and will change in the future, not necessarily back-compatible when it does). Docs coming soon.
  • Fast path for message addressing #3119
  • Add extension for one-way grain calls #3224
  • Google PubSub Stream provider #3210
  • Lease based queue balancer for streams #3196 #3237 #3333
  • Allow localhost connection in AWS SQS Storage provider #3485

• Non-breaking bug fixes

  • Fix occasional NullReferenceException during silo shutdown #3328
  • Avoid serializing delegates and other non-portable types #3240
  • ServiceFabric membership: ensure all silos reach a terminal state #3568
  • Limit RequestContext to messaging layer. It is technically a change in behavior, but not one that end users could have relied upon, but listing it here in case someone notices side-effects due to this #3546

v1.5.2

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.5.1.

• Non-breaking bug fixes

  • Fix memory leak when using grain timers #3452
  • Fix infrequent NullReferenceException during activation collection #3399
  • Improve resiliency in in client message pump loop #3367
  • Service Fabric: fix leak in registration of partition notifications #3411
  • Fixed duplicate stream message cache monitoring bug #3522
  • Several minor bug fixes and perf improvements #3419 #3420 #3489

• Non-breaking improvements

  • Support for PostgreSql as a Storage provider #3384
  • Make JsonConverters inside OrleansJsonSerializer public #3398
  • Set TypeNameHandling in OrleansJsonSerializer according to configuration #3400

v1.5.1

Known issue (not new to 1.5.1): if your Orleans client project uses ASP.NET Core, there is a breaking change in the Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection package when upgrading to 2.0.0 of it (which is required in ASP.NET Core 2). See #3325 for more info.

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.5.0

• Non-breaking bug fixes
  • Support implicit authentication to DynamoDB (via IAM Roles) #3229
  • Added missing registration for 7-component tuple and several collection interfaces #3282 #3313
  • Support custom silo names in Service Fabric integration #3241
  • Fix scheduling of notification interfaces (which impacted Service Fabric integration) #3290
  • Dispose IServiceProvider during client shutdown #3249
  • ClusterClient.Dispose() is now equivalent to Abort() #3306
  • Avoid BadImageFormatException from being written in the log during Silo or client startup #3216
  • Add build-time code generation to Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansServiceBus package #3344
  • Several minor bug fixes and perf improvements, as well as reliability in our test code #3234 #3250 #3258 #3283 #3301 #3309 #3311

v1.5.0

Major new features

• Non-static grain client via ClientBuilder enables connecting to multiple Orleans cluster from the same app domain and connecting to other clusters from within a silo.
• Support for versioning of grain interfaces for non-downtime upgrades.
• Support for custom grain placement strategies and directors.
• Support for hash-based grain placement.

Changelog (1.5.0, 1.5.0-beta, and 1.5.0-rc)

• Breaking changes

  • Bug fix: Azure storage providers now throw InconsistenStateException instead of StorageException when eTags do not match #2971
  • Automatically deactivate a grain if it bubbles up InconsistentStateException (thrown when there is an optimistic concurrency conflict when writing to storage) #2959
  • Upgraded minimum framework dependency to .NET 4.6.1 #2945
  • Support for non-static client via ClientBuilder (although static GrainClient still works but will be removed in a future version). You can now start many clients in the same process, even if you are inside a Silo #2822.
    There are a few differences though:
    • Several changes to SerializationManager, mainly to make it non-static #2592
      • When deserializing a GrainReference from storage, you might need to re-bind it to the runtime by calling grain.BindGrainReference(grainFactory) on it or you would get GrainReferenceNotBoundException when attempting to use it #2738
      • Removed RegisterSerializerAttribute (and corresponding static Register method for registering a custom serializer). If you were using that, please read https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/Documentation/Advanced-Concepts/Serialization.html#writing-custom-serializers for alternative ways to register your custom serializer #2941
  • Better serialization of Type values (but can cause compatibility issues if these were persisted by using the Serialziation Manager) #2952
  • Providers are now constructed using Dependency Injection. The result is that custom providers must have a single public constructor with either no arguments or arguments which can all be injected, or they need to be explicitly registered in the ServiceCollection. #2721 #2980
  • Replaced CacheSizeInMb setting with DataMaxAgeInCache and DataMinTimeInCache in stream providers #3126
  • Renamed the Catalog.Activation.DuplicateActivations counter to Catalog.Activation.ConcurrentRegistrationAttempts to more accurately reflect what it tracks and its benign nature #3130
  • Change default stream subscription faulting to false in EventHub and Memory stream providers, as is in other providers #2974
  • Allow IGrainWithGuidCompoundKey as implicit subscription grain, and sets the stream namespace as the grain key extension (subtle breaking change: previous to 1.5 IGrainWithGuidCompoundKey wasn't technically supported, but if you did use it, the grain key extension would have had a null string) #3011
  • The static GrainReference.FromKeyString method is no longer accessible, it has been replaced with IGrainReferenceConverter.GetGrainFromKeyString, which is accessible from the IServiceProvider.

• Non-breaking improvements

  • Support for custom placement strategies and directors #2932
  • Grain interface versioning to enable no-downtime upgrades #2837 2837 #3055
  • Expose available versions information in placement context #3136
  • Add support for hash-based grain placement #2944
  • Support fire and forget one-way grain calls using [OneWay] method attribute #2993
  • Replace CallContext.LogicalSetData with AsyncLocal #2200 #2961
  • Support multiple silo request interceptors #3083
  • Ability to configure FabricClient when deploying to Service Fabric #2954
  • Added extension points to EventHubAdapterFactory #2930
  • Added SlowConsumingPressureMonitor for EventHub streams #2873
  • Dispose all registered services in the container when shutting down #2876
  • Try to prevent port collisions when starting in-memory TestCluster #2779
  • Deprecated TestingSiloHost in favor of TestCluster (although the former is still available for this version) #2919
  • Support exceptions with reference cycles in ILBasedExceptionSerializer #2999
  • Add extensibility point to replace the grain activator and finalizer #3002
  • Add statistics to EventHub stream provider ecosystem
  • Add flag to disable FastKill on CTRL-C #3109
  • Avoid benign DuplicateActivationException from showing up in the logs #3130
  • Programmable stream subscribe API #2741 #2796 #2909
  • Allow complex streaming filters in ImplicitStreamSubscriptionAttribute #2988
  • Make StreamQueueBalancer pluggable #3152
  • ServiceFabric: Register ISiloStatusOracle implementation in ServiceCollection #3160

• Non-breaking bug fixes

  • Improve resiliency in stream PubSub when facing ungraceful shutdown of producers and silos #3003 #3128
  • Fixes to local IP address resolution #3069
  • Fixed a few issues with the Service Fabric membership provider #3059 #3061 #3128
  • Use PostgreSQL synchronous API to avoid locking in DB thread with newer versions of Npgsql #3164
  • Fix race condition on cancelling of GrainCancellationTokenSource #3168
  • Fixes and improvements for the Event Hub stream provider #3014 #3096 #3041 #3052 #2989
  • Fix NullReferenceException when no LogConsistencyProvider attribute is provided #3158
  • Several minor bug fixes and perf improvements, as well as reliability in our test code

v1.5.0-RC

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.5.0-beta1 (checkout v1.5.0-beta1 release notes for changes since 1.4.X)

• Breaking changes
  • Bug fix: Azure storage providers now throw InconsistenStateException instead of StorageException when eTags do not match #2971
  • Renamed the Catalog.Activation.DuplicateActivations counter to Catalog.Activation.ConcurrentRegistrationAttempts to more accurately reflect what it tracks and its benign nature #3130
  • Upgraded WindowsAzure.ServiceBus package dependency to 4.1.0 #3127
  • Replaced CacheSizeInMb setting with DataMaxAgeInCache and DataMinTimeInCache in stream providers #3126
  • Allow IGrainWithGuidCompoundKey as implicit subscription grain, and sets the stream namespace as the grain key extension (subtle breaking change: previous to 1.5 IGrainWithGuidCompoundKey wasn't technically supported, but if you did use it, the grain key extension would have had a null string) #3011
• Non-breaking improvements
  • Enable runtime policy change for Silo versioning #3055
  • Expose available versions information in placement context #3136
  • Add support for hash-based grain placement #2944
  • Allow complex streaming filters in ImplicitStreamSubscriptionAttribute #2988
  • Support fire and forget one-way grain calls using [OneWay] method attribute #2993
  • Support exceptions with reference cycles in ILBasedExceptionSerializer #2999
  • Add extensibility point to replace the grain activator and finalizer #3002
  • Generate serializers for more types #3035
  • Expose IsOrleansShallowCopyable for external custom serializers #3077
  • Detect if activation is in Deactivating state for too long and remove it from the directory if needed #3082
  • Support grains with key extensions containing + symbols #2956
  • Allow TimeSpan.MaxValue in configuration #2985
  • Add statistics to EventHub stream provider ecosystem
  • Support for us-gov-west-1 as a possible AWS region endpoint #3017
  • Support CultureInfo via built-in serializer #3036
  • Support multiple silo request interceptors #3083
  • Add flag to disable FastKill on CTRL-C #3109
  • Avoid benign DuplicateActivationException from showing up in the logs #3130
• Non-breaking bug fixes
  • Fix various unhandled exceptions happening during client closing #2962
  • Improve resiliency in stream PubSub when facing ungraceful shutdown of producers and silos #3003 #3128
  • SMS: Ensure items are copied before yielding the thread in OnNextAsync #3048 #3058
  • Remove unneeded extra constructors to play nicer with some non fully-conforming 3rd party containers #2996 #3074
  • Fixes to local IP address resolution #3069
  • Fixed a few issues with the Service Fabric membership provider #3059 #3061 #3128
  • Fixes and improvements for the Event Hub stream provider #3014 #3096 #3041 #3052 #2989

v1.4.2

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.4.1

• Non-breaking improvements
  • Generate serializers for more types #3035
  • Improvements to GrainServices API #2839
  • Add extensibility point to replace the grain activator #3002
  • Expose IsOrleansShallowCopyable for external custom serializers #3077
  • Detect if activation is in Deactivating state for too long and remove it from the directory if needed #3082
  • Support grains with key extensions containing + symbols #2956
  • Allow TimeSpan.MaxValue in configuration #2985
  • Support for us-gov-west-1 as a possible AWS region endpoint #3017
  • Support CultureInfo via built-in serializer #3036
• Non-breaking bug fixes
  • Change how message expiration is handled to account for server clock skew #2922
  • Fix various unhandled exceptions happening during client closing #2962
  • SMS: Ensure items are copied before yielding the thread in OnNextAsync #3048 #3058
  • Remove unneeded extra constructors to play nicer with some non fully-conforming 3rd party containers #2996 #3074

v1.5.0-beta1

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.4.1.

• Breaking changes
  • Upgraded minimum framework dependency to .NET 4.6.1 #2945
  • Support for non-static client via ClientBuilder (although static GrainClient still works but will be removed in a future version). You can now start many clients in the same process, even if you are inside a Silo #2822.
    There are a few differences though:
    • Several changes to SerializationManager, mainly to make it non-static #2592
      • When deserializing a GrainReference from storage, you might need to re-bind it to the runtime by calling grain.BindGrainReference(grainFactory) on it or you would get GrainReferenceNotBoundException when attempting to use it #2738
      • Removed RegisterSerializerAttribute (and corresponding static Register method for registering a custom serializer). If you were using that, please read https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/Documentation/Advanced-Concepts/Serialization.html#writing-custom-serializers for alternative ways to register your custom serializer #2941
  • Better serialization of Type values (but can cause compatibility issues if these were persisted by using the Serialization Manager) #2952
  • Automatically deactivate a grain if it bubbles up InconsistentStateException (thrown when there is an optimistic concurrency conflict when writing to storage) #2959
  • Providers are now constructed using Dependency Injection. The result is that custom providers must have a single public constructor with either no arguments or arguments which can all be injected, or they need to be explicitly registered in the ServiceCollection. #2721 #2980
  • Change default stream subscription faulting to false in EventHub and Memory stream providers, as is in other providers #2974
  • Bug fix: Azure storage providers now throw InconsistenStateException instead of StorageException when eTags do not match #2971
• Non-breaking improvements
  • Grain interface versioning to enable no-downtime upgrades #2837 2837
  • Programmable stream subscribe API #2741 #2796 #2909
  • Support for custom placement strategies and directors #2932
  • Improvements to GrainServices API #2839
  • Replace CallContext.LogicalSetData with AsyncLocal #2200 #2961
  • Ability to configure FabricClient when deploying to Service Fabric #2954
  • Added extension points to EventHubAdapterFactory #2930
  • Added SlowConsumingPressureMonitor for EventHub streams #2873
  • Dispose all registered services in the container when shutting down #2876
  • Try to prevent port collisions when starting in-memory TestCluster #2779
  • Deprecated TestingSiloHost in favor of TestCluster (although the former is still available for this version) #2919
• Non-breaking bug fixes
  • Change how message expiration is handled to account for server clock skew #2922
  • Several minor bug fixes and perf improvements, as well as reliability in our test code

v1.4.1

Improvements and bug fixes since 1.4.0.
Addressed the known issue in 1.4.0: "When the silo starts up, it will register IServiceProvider in the container, which can be a circular reference registration when using 3rd party containers such as AutoFac."

• Improvements
  • Fix a cleanup issue in TestCluster after a failure #2734
  • Remove unnecessary service registration of IServiceProvider to itself, which improves support for 3rd party containers #2749
  • Add a timeout for socket connection #2791
  • Support for string grain id in OrleansManager.exe #2815
  • Avoid reconnection to gateway no longer in the list returned by IGatewayListProvider #2824
  • Handle absolute path in IntermediateOutputPath to address issue 2864 #2865, #2871
  • Rename codegen file to be excluded from analyzers #2872
  • ProviderTypeLoader: do not enumerate types in ReflectionOnly assembly. #2869
  • Do not throw when calling Stop on AsynchQueueAgent after it was disposed.
• Bug fixes
  • NodeConfiguration.AdditionalAssemblyDirectories was not 'deeply' copied in the copy constructor #2758
  • Fix AsReference() in generated code for null values #2756
  • Avoid a NullReferenceException in SerializationManager.Register(...) #2768
  • Fix missing check for empty deployment id #2786
  • Fix to make OrleansPerfCounterTelemetryConsumer still work for grain-specific counters. (part of #2807)
  • Fix typos in format strings #2853
  • Fix null reference exception in simple queue cache. #2829

v1.4.0

Major new features

• Revamped JournaledGrain for event sourcing with support for geo-distributed log-based consistency providers.
• Abstraction of Grain Services with fixed-placed per-silo application components with their workload partitioned via cluster consistency ring.
• Support for heterogeneous silos with non-uniform distribution of available grain classes.
• Cluster membership provider for Service Fabric.

Changelog (1.4.0 and 1.4.0-beta)

New in v1.4.0 since beta

• Known issues
  • When the silo starts up, it will register IServiceProvider in the container, which can be a circular reference registration when using 3rd party containers such as AutoFac. This is bein addressed for 1.4.1, but there is a simple workaround for it at #2747
  • The build-time code generator required (and automatically added) a file named Properties\orleans.codegen.cs to the project where codegen was being ran. The new MSBuild targets no longer do that, so when upgrading a solution with a previous version of Orleans, you should delete this orleans.codegen.cs file from your grain projects.
• Improvements
  • Support for grains with generic methods #2670
  • Do native PE files check before assembly loading to avoid misleading warnings on startup #2714
  • Throw explicit exception when using streams not in Orleans Context #2683
  • Several improvements to JournaledGrain API #2651 #2720
  • Allow overriding MethodId using [MethodId(id)] on interface methods #2660
• Bug fixes
  • EventHubSequenceToken not used consistently #2724
  • Support grains with generic state where the state param do not match the grain type params #2715
  • Fix ServiceFabric IFabricServiceSiloResolver registration in DI container #2712
  • Fix ConditionalCheckFailedException when updating silo 'IAmAlive' field in DynamoDB #2678
  • Ensure DynamoDB Gateway Provider only returns silos with a proxy port configured #2679
  • Fix e-Tag issue in AzureBlobStorage when calling ClearStateAsync (#2669)
  • Other minor fixes: #2729 #2691

Changes in v1.4.0-beta

• Noteworthy breaking changes:
  • Azure table storage throws InconsistentStateException #2630
  • All grain instances and providers are constructed using the configured Dependency Injection container. The result is that all grains must have a single parameterless public constructor or single constructor with arguments which can all be injected. If no container is configured, the default container will be used. #2485
• Improvements
  • Optional IL-based fallback serializer #2162
  • IncomingMessageAcceptor sockets change from APM to EAP #2275
  • Show clearer error when ADO.NET provider fails to init #2303, #2306
  • In client, when a gateway connection close reroute not yet sent message to another gateway #2298
  • MySQL Script: Minor syntax tweak to support previous server versions #2342
  • Azure Queue provider message visibility config #2401
  • Propagate exceptions during message body deserialization #2364
  • Check IAddressable before DeepCopy #2383
  • Modified stream types to not use fallback serializer and allow external #2330
  • Add "Custom/" prefix for NewRelic metrics #2453
  • Ignore named EventWaitHandle when not available in platform #2462
  • Heterogenous silos support #2443
  • Update to Consul 0.7.0.3 nuget package, because of breaking change in Consul API. #2498
  • Grain Services by @jamescarter-le #2531
  • Expose IMembershipOracle & related interfaces #2557
  • Trigger registration of clients connected to the gateways in the directory when a silo is dead #2587
  • Log Consistency Providers #1854
  • In XML config, if SystemStoreType set to Custom but no ReminderTableAssembly are specified, assume that ReminderServiceProviderType is set to Disabled #2589
  • In config XML, when SystemStoreType is set to MembershipTableGrain, set ReminderServiceType to ReminderTableGrain #2590
  • Service Fabric cluster membership providers #2542
  • Adds optional native JSON support to MySQL #2288
  • Allow serializers to have multiple [Serializer(...)] attributes #2611
  • Removed GrainStateStorageBridge from GrainCreator to allow better control of the IStorage used when using non-silo unit tests. #2243
  • Failsafe Exception serialization #2633
  • Added a data adapter to azure queue stream provider #2658
  • Client cluster disconnection #2628
  • Tooling improvements in build-time codegen #2523
• Performance
  • Several major performance improvements: #2220, #2221, #2170, #2218, #2312, #2524, #2510, #2481, #2579
  • Release BinaryTokenStreamWriter buffers after use in more cases. #2326
• Bug fixes
  • Empty deployment Id in Azure #2230
  • Remove zero length check in Protobuf serializer #2251
  • Make PreferLocalPlacement activate in other silos when shutting down #2276
  • Reset GrainClient.ClientInvokeCallback when uninitializing GrainClient #2299
  • Fix ObjectDisposedException in networking layer #2302
  • Reset client gateway reciever buffer on socket reset. #2316
  • Removed calling Trace.Close() from TelemetryConsumer.Close() #2396
  • Removes deadlocking and corrupted hashing in SQL storage provider #2395
  • Fix #2358: Invoke interceptor broken for generic grains #2502
  • Only a hard coded set of statistics were going to telemetry consumers. Now all non-string statistics are tracked. #2513
  • Fix invocation interception for grain extensions #2514
  • Fix type assertion in AdaptiveDirectoryCacheMaintainer #2525
  • MembershipTableFactory should call InitializeMembershipTable on membership table. #2537
  • CodeGen: fix check on parameters to generic types with serializers #2575
  • EventHubQueueCache failing to write checkpoints on purge #2613
  • Fix code copy-paste errors discovered by Coverity #2639
  • GrainServices are now Started by the Silo on Startup #2642

For the full changelog and up-to-date known issues, see Changelog