News¶

RSB 0.19¶

Changes

none so far

RSB 0.18¶

This RSB release is available in the following forms:

Source archives
Pre-compiled self-installing archives or executable binaries
Debian packages for different Ubuntu GNU/Linux versions (currently C++ and Common Lisp implementations only)
Pypi packages for the Python implementation
Maven package for the Java implementation

These can be downloaded from the 0.18 jobs continuous integration server or repository server respectively. Installation instructions and links for downloading can be found in the RSB manual.

As always, bugs, feature requests and enhancement proposals can be reported as issues in the appropriate project of our github organization.

Changes

C++
- A single Spread connection is now shared between all listeners and informers in the process.
- Improvements in the RSC library lead to the following improvements:
  - Fewer compiler warnings during compilation
  - Minor improvements in the logging, configuration and plugin sub-systems
Python
- A single Spread connection is now shared between all participants.
Common Lisp
- A single Spread connection is now shared between all participants.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/75.

RSB 0.17¶

This RSB release is available in the following forms:

Source archives
Pre-compiled self-installing archives or executable binaries
Debian packages for different Ubuntu GNU/Linux versions (currently C++ and Common Lisp implementations only)
Pypi packages for the Python implementation
Maven package for the Java implementation

These can be downloaded from the 0.17 jobs continuous integration server or repository server respectively. Installation instructions and links for downloading can be found in the RSB manual.

As always, bugs, feature requests and enhancement proposals can be reported as issues in the appropriate project of our github organization.

Changes

Java
- Participants now implement the Closeable interface.
Common Lisp
- On Linux, the socket transport now supports UNIX domain sockets in the abstract namespace using the unix: scheme.
- Scope parsing and construction is now more efficient.
Python
- Synchronous RPCs now accept a timeout keyword argument.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/74.

RSB 0.16¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

Python
- The reader pattern has been implemented. However, currently only the Spread transport can be used with it.
Common Lisp
- The XPath filter is now able to access all event attributes and payloads.
Common Lisp Tools
- The image/png event formatting style produces more compact output and supports more pixel formats.
- The logger command now supports XPath-based filtering of events.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/58.

RSB 0.15¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

All implementations
- A new filter which discriminates events based on causal vectors has been added.
- Configuration debugging using RSB_CONFIG_DEBUG is now supported in all implementations.
- The environment variable RSB_CONFIG_FILES can be used to make RSB attempt to load a non-default cascade of configuration files.
- Converters for the scope data type are now available in all implementations.
C++
- Converters for integer values are now provided by the generic rsb::converter::IntegerConverter.
- A few C++11 incompatibilities have been resolved.
Common Lisp Tools
- The scope monitor event formatting style now collapses chains of scopes with exactly one subscope into a single line to save vertical space.
- The web tool now provides a web interface for basic introspection queries.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/56.

RSB 0.14¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

C++
- Converters for float and double values have been added and are registered by default.
- Setting the environment variable __CONFIG_DEBUG to an arbitrary value enables configuration debugging. Debug output is written to stderr.
Java
- Spread connections can now be shared between listeners (for informers, this has been possible since RSB 0.12), which reduces the number of open connections to the Spread daemon.
- A converter for Float values has been added and is registered by default.
- Timestamps are now generated with millisecond accuracy and precision on Linux and Mac by using native system calls if possible. Other platforms should not be broken by this and fall back to millisecond precision. Due to this change, the Java implementation has new dependencies now.
Common Lisp
- Filters are now more efficient.
Common Lisp Tools
- All Tools can now load data type definitions on demand, lessening the pain of having to up-front specify and load all required definitions (See --on-demand-idl-loading).
- The bridge tool now converts payloads iff required by a filter or transform, limiting the need to load data type definitions to situations in which they are actually needed.
- The logger tool now accepts the --stop-after option, causing it to terminate after processing a specified number of events.
- An event formatting style multiple-files for writing output into an individual file for each event has been added.
- The new server tool can act as a standalone RSB socket transport server.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/51.

RSB 0.13¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

RSB now has an official logo.
All languages
- The APIs of the different language implementations have been unified. Please refer to the different language-specific sections and issue 2222 for details.
Manual
- The API documentation links have been moved from the sidebar to a new item on the start page of the manual along with the direct inclusion of the Python API documentation in this manual.
C++
- The API has been adapted to match other implementations:
  - Event::{get,set}EventId has been renamed to {get,set}Id. The previously existing and long time deprecated method getId has been removed during this process.
  - Event::getSequenceNumber has been deprecated in favor of the respective method on an EventId instance.
  - MetaData::{get,set}SenderId have been deprecated in favor of using the getParticipantId method on an EventId instance.
- RSB C++ will now throw an exception in case a requested plugin cannot be found (issue #2487).
- The options plugins.cpp.path and plugins.cpp.load behave more consistently and allow inheriting values from the next more generic configuration source.
Python
- The API documentation is now included in this manual.
Java
- The Maven repository server RSB java is deployed to has moved. You need to update your downstream projects accordingly to receive new versions of this project. Instructions can be found at the installation instructions.
- The ant build system of RSB java has been dropped and the project has been converted to a proper Maven project using the standard file system layout conventions etc. Ant users can still use the project by including the Maven-generated jar files. Also, the convenient zip archive containing the RSB java jar as well as the required upstream dependencies still exists. Please refer to the installation instructions for further information and updated URLs resulting from this change.
- The filter API has been refactored to match the API of the other language implementations. While AbstractFilter still provides the old API for client code, it has been deprecated in favor of directly implementing the much simplified Filter interface. Client code has to be updated.
- InterruptedExceptions are now handled correctly (i.e. not swallowed) and properly exposed to callers, who are the ones who need to handle them. This changes the API slightly.
- RemoteServer exposes the standard java.util.concurrent.Future interface instead of a custom implementation class. This ensures compatibility with standard interfaces, prevents accidental exception hiding (as happened with InterruptedException) and prevents clients from illegally completing a Future instance. As a consequence, the get method with just a long value as a timeout in milliseconds is not available anymore (that signature is not part of the standard Future interface). Always supplying an explicit TimeUnit makes things much clearer, anyway. This changes the API in an incompatible way and client code needs to be updated.
- InvalidStateException has been removed and replaced with IllegalStateException. The documented behavior was to throw IllegalStateException anyway in Activatable. Please update your exception handlers in case you previously handled InvalidStateException.
- The RPC Callback API has been changed to only allow throwing Exception instances and not every Throwable. This ensures that important things like out of memory errors are not caught uncontrollably by the framework. You probably only have to change the callback invoke method declarations to throws Exception.
- The Informer#send methods have been renamed to publish to match other implementations. The old names still exist for some time with a deprecation warning before they will be removed.
Common Lisp
- The rsb.patterns package now provides a protocol for creating and managing child participants in composite participants.
- When acting as server, the socket transport can now choose an unused port automatically if port number 0 is specified. The obtained port can be written to output streams or a file:
```
socket://localhost:0?server=1&portfile=-
```
Common Lisp Tools
- Symbolic-link-based invocation and selection of sub-commands is no longer supported.
- The default formatting style of the logger is now “monitor” instead of “compact”.
- Scope payloads are now printed properly as well as accepted by the call and send tools.
- The logger and introspect tools use a human-readable, compact format similar to UNIX tools for numeric output like counts, sizes and durations.
- The scope-based monitor event formatting style of the logger now arranges scopes in a tree of adjustable maximum depth by default, allowing more compact display and therefore handling of larger systems.
- An event formatting style that outputs JSON data has been added.
- A bridge tool for forwarding of events between RSB buses has been implemented.
- The Send and Call tools can now read payloads specifications in the Google protocol buffers debug text format from files.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/47.

RSB 0.12¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

Specification
- A “display name” field has been added to the introspection protocol and a corresponding configuration option introspection.displayname has been added. Users can specify this configuration property for individual processes (e.g. via environment variables) to provide a custom name for the process, which is then e.g. shown by the introspection tool.
All languages
- Spread connections are now shared between informers, which reduces the number of open connections to the Spread daemon.
C++
- The implementation now uses Boost.Signals2 instead of the deprecated version 1. This changes the external API for participant hooks, which is rarely used externally. In case you have used these hooks, you need to migrate to the new signals namespaces and type names.
- LocalServer::Callback implementations to reuse existing functions or methods have been added.
- Several methods and types that have long been deprecated have been removed, including the method Factory::getInstance().
Java
- Several minor issues in the socket transport implementation have been fixed.
Common Lisp
- The rsb:with-listener, rsb:with-reader, rsb:with-informer, rsb.patterns.request-reply:with-local-server and rsb.patterns.request-reply:with-remote-server macros have been replaced by rsb:with-active-participant and rsb:with-participant.
- Similarly, the rsb:make-listener, rsb:make-reader, rsb:make-informer, rsb.patterns.request-reply:make-local-server and rsb.patterns.request-reply:make-remote-server functions have been replaced by rsb:make-participant.
Common Lisp Tools
- All tools now use a sub-command-based commandline syntax like git, svn and other modern commandline tools. The previous symbolic-link-based invocation will continue to work for a transition period. Example of the new syntax:
```
rsb-toolscl0.12 logger --style monitor socket:
```
- The Send and Call tools now accept payloads specified using the Google protocol buffers debug text format.
- A new experimental Web tool which serves information about an RSB system via HTTP has been added.
  
  Warning
  
  Experimental - use with care.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/42.

RSB 0.11¶

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Note

Starting with this release, the request-reply communication pattern uses a new protocol. As a result, request-reply communication is not be possible between earlier versions and this version of RSB.

Note

Although never “officially” supported, the Python implementation previously allowed constructing participants by using the constructors of the respective classes. This is now explicitly unsupported. rsb.createListener() etc. have to be used instead.

Changes

Introspection

RSB now supports inspecting the participants, processes and hosts comprising a running system.
Specification
- subscopes of /__rsb/ are now reserved for implementation purposes. The Logger will not display events on these scopes by default.
- An introspection protocol which works in terms of ordinary RSB events has been added.
- Request-reply communication pattern
  - The request and reply components have been removed from the scopes of participants implementing the communication protocol.
C++
- Support for sending introspection information has been added as a plugin.
- The build system now provides the CMake variable RSB_SYSTEM_PLUGIN_DIRECTORY for downstream projects.
- New filter class rsb::filter::MethodFilter
- New filter class rsb::filter::TypeFilter
- Tools based on and examples for the C++ implementation now use the RSC functions rsc::misc::waitForSignal() and rsc::misc::lastArrivedSignal() to terminate with proper cleanup of RSB objects.
- The entry names for the enum rsb::transport::Directions have been prefixed with DIRECTION_ in order to prevent clashes with preprocessor symbols.
- It is now safe to maintain participants in static variables since all transports have been rewritten so that the unknown order of static destruction is not a problem anymore.
Java
- Support for sending introspection information has been added as a package.
Python
- Support for sending introspection information has been added as a package.
- New filter class rsb.filter.MethodFilter
- rsb.createServer() has been renamed to rsb.createLocalServer(). For backward compatibility, the former function has been retained as a deprecated alias for the latter.
Common Lisp
- Support for sending introspection information has been added as part of the rsb-introspection system.
- Support for receiving and aggregating introspection information has been added as part of the rsb-introspection system.
- Participants can be created generically using the generic function make-participant which is backed by a service-provider protocol for registering, instantiating and inspecting kinds of participants.
- Creation and state changes of participants can now be monitored via *make-participant-hook* and *participant-state-change-hook*.
- The implementation of the Request-reply pattern has moved from package rsb.patterns to package rsb.patterns.request-reply.
Common Lisp Tools
- The new Introspect tool collects and displays introspection information.
- Some problems (e.g. starting the Logger with a scope option or without URI scheme) in the URI handling of the Common Lisp tools have been solved.
- All column-based event formatting styles now compute (mostly) optimal column widths dynamically instead of choosing from a set of predefined layouts.
- The timeline view of the Logger can now handle events whose timestamps lie in the past or future.
- The timestamp used to construct the timeline view of the Logger is now configurable.
- A new event formatting style monitor/timeline has been added.
- Monitor and timeline views of the Logger now accept :sort-column COLUMN and :sort-reverse? BOOLEAN arguments.
- Monitor and timeline views of the Logger can now remove entries after a configurable time of inactivity.
- The Logger now accepts multiple URIs

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/41.

RSB 0.10¶

Note

Starting with this release, Ubuntu GNU/Linux lucid is no longer officially supported. At least for C++, the CMake scripts will most likely not work.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

C++
- Special CMake -level support for finding custom installations of the Boost.UUID library has been dropped as this library is a standard part of Boost since some time now.
- Incompatible API change: Moved EventQueuePushHandler and QueuePushHandler to util namespace
- Improved logging, error messages and API for converter selection, configuration and registration
- Converter registration is no longer necessary for the inprocess transport
- Zip archive for Windows
Java
- Added inprocess transport
- Fixed implementation of sequence number generation
- Some thread-safety and shutdown issues in the socket transport have been fixed
- Default participant configuration is now available via getDefaulParticipantConfig
- Updated internal Spread Java implementation to version 4.3. This still allows communication with all 4.x Spread daemons.
Python
- Participants now support the context manager protocol (with statements)
- The configuration file at PREFIX/etc/rsb.conf is now processed
Common Lisp
- Socket transport now listens on all interfaces in server mode
- Socket transport now handles disconnected clients better while under load
- Logging is now implemented using a more robust and more efficient implementation. The user-visible interface remains unchanged.
Tools
- The Common Lisp implementation of the tools now comes with scripts for analyzing some timing-related aspects of system. These scripts can be used by the Logger as well as the RSBag tools.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/11.

RSB 0.9¶

Note

In the C++ implementation, the Spread transport is now implemented as a plugin. In case of problems, see Spread Does not Work.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

Integration of the new RSC plugin mechanism in the C++ implementation for transports and converters
Encapsulation of the spread transport into a separate plugin
Complete overhaul of the Java implementation to be in line with the remaining implementations
- As a consequence, the public API has slightly changed, especially with respect to thrown exceptions
- Implementation of the socket transport
Fixes in all implementations of the socket transport
The RPC API now supports some method signatures that did not work previously
Fixes for Windows compatibility
Documentation improvements

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/12.

RSB 0.7¶

Note

Only the TCP-socket transport is now enabled by default.

For transport configuration issues see Troubleshooting.
RSB and related projects are now maintained in git repositories. See https://code.cor-lab.de/news/21 for more information.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

Changes

The TCP-socket transport is now fully implemented in C++, Python and Common Lisp and used by default there.
Error recovery, robustness and features of RSB
End-user documentation
Packaging and deployment
send tool

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/versions/22.

RSB 0.6¶

Note

RSB clients using the 0.6 version cannot generally communicate with clients using a previous RSB version.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

General Changes

All core components have been relicensed to LGPLv3.
Sub-projects have been cleaned up.
Manuals have been created and can be accessed at https://docs.cor-lab.org/rsb-manual/0.6/html. For a list of all documentation, see https://docs.cor-lab.org.
RSB programs now process PREFIX/etc/rsb.conf if such a file exists.

Tools

The C++ logger now has a “monitor mode”
The C++ logger can now print event collections
The Common Lisp logger adjusts its display to the width of the containing terminal
The Common Lisp logger can now print event collections

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/projects/rsb/versions/25.

RSB 0.5¶

Note

RSB clients using the 0.5 version of RSB cannot generally communicate with clients using a previous RSB version.
The Spread transport is no longer active by default (see below).
The API is in some parts not backwards-compatible.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

The development activities in this cycle focused primarily on API improvements and the integration of causal vectors. Moreover, complete compatibility for MSVC 2010 is now ensured and MacOS compatibility has been improved. In the process, about 60 issues have been created and subsequently resolved.

General Changes

A tutorial is now included in the RSB source tree: “0.5” branch of https://github.com/open-rsx/rsb-tutorials
Several introductory talks are now included in the RSB source tree: “0.5” branch of https://github.com/open-rsx/rsb-talks
“RSB-related build jobs”:https://ci.cor-lab.de/view/rsb-0.5 on the continuous integration sever have been reorganized.
Simple benchmarking tools are available in the rsbench project.
The #rsb IRC channel on the freenode network can now be used for additional support and discussion.
Installation instructions have been improved.

Network Protocol and Configuration

Causal vectors have been added to the network protocol. They allow to tag which event or events caused a given event.
The default transport configuration has been changed:
- The inprocess transport is now enabled by default
- The Spread transport is now disabled by default and has to be enabled explicitly when network communication is desired. This can e.g. be done by adding the user configuration file ~/.config/rsb.conf with the following content:
```
[transport.spread]
enabled = 1

[transport.inprocess]
enabled = 0
```

Tools

The C++ logger now displays causal vectors.
The Common Lisp logger now displays causal vectors.
The Common Lisp logger now displays configurable statistics.
The Common Lisp logger now allows configuring the columns in the “compact” formatting style.
The call tool for performing RPCs from the commandline has been added.

C++

Support for causal vectors has been added.
The client API for creation and configuration of participants and events has been simplified.
Convenience functions for participant creation without the factory have been added. (Suggested by: Robert Haschke)
OriginFilter has been added.
Compilation time has been reduced. (Suggested by: Matthias Rolf)
A name-clash with a Qt macro has been resolved (Reported by: Matthias Rolf)
Event dispatching now allows multiple threading strategies.
Performance Improvements * Caching of Spread group names * <-comparison of EventId s

Java

Support for causal vectors has been added.
OriginFilter has been added.

Python

Support for causal vectors has been added.
OriginFilter has been added.

Common Lisp

Support for causal vectors has been added.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/projects/rsb/versions/21.

RSB 0.4¶

Note

RSB clients using the 0.4 version of RSB cannot communicate with clients using a previous RSB version.

Note

This RSB release is only available in source code form from the repository server.

We no longer accept bug reports against this RSB version.

The development activities in this cycle focused primarily on extending and optimizing the wire format and improving the usability of and support for protocol buffer message objects as event payloads. In the process, more than 30 issues have been created and subsequently resolved.

Network Protocol for Spread-based Communication

The eagerly computed, mandatory unique id field of events is now lazily computed from a static id and a sequence number. Events can be transmitted without computing the id. This change saves 12 bytes in each notification sent over the wire. (Thanks: Stefan Herbrechtsmeier)
Incompatible wire format versions can now be detected by means of a trick which does not incur any runtime overhead in space or time. This enabled removal of the version field in notifications, saving four bytes in each notification sent over the wire.
The method field of events is now fully specified and used in request/reply communication.

C++

In addition to blocking request/reply invocation, a future-based asynchronous interface is now available.
Several performance problems related to scope and event construction have been fixed. (Thanks: Matthias Rolf, Arne Nordmann)

Java

Request/reply communication with blocking and asynchronous invocation modes has been implemented.
A converter registration and selection mechanism and a generic converter for Google protocol buffers data holder classes have been added.

Python

Request/reply communication with blocking and asynchronous invocation modes has been implemented.
A converter for Google protocol buffers data holder classes has been added.

Common Lisp

Request/reply communication with blocking and asynchronous invocation modes has been implemented.

Note

For a more detailed list of fixed bugs, added features and other enhancements, see https://code.cor-lab.de/projects/rsb/versions/17.