What's new in Orleans?

v1.2.3 July 11th 2016

Release notes

• Ability to force creation of Orleans serializers for types not marked with [Serializable] by using GenerateSerializer, KnownType or KnownAssembly.TreatTypesAsSerializable #1888 #1864 #1855
• Troubleshooting improvements:
  • Fixed stacktrace preservation in exceptions from grain calls (bug introduced in 1.2.0) #1879 #1808
  • Better messaging when silo fails to join due to initial connectivity problems #1866 #1933
  • Throw meaningful exception if grain timer is created outside grain context #1858
• Bug fixes:
  • Do not deactivate Stateless Workers upon grain directory partition shutdown #1838
  • interception works with Streams and grain extensions #1874
  • Memory Storage provider properly enforces etags for any state that has been added or removed, but does not enforce etags for newly added state. #1885
  • Other minor bug fixes #1884 #1823

v1.2.2 June 15th 2016

Release notes

• Bugfix: Remote stacktrace is once again being included in the exception that bubbles up to the caller (bug introduced in 1.2.0). #1808
• Bugfix: Memory Storage provider no longer throws NullReferenceException after the grain state is cleared. #1804
• Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansCodeGenerator.Build package updated to not add the empty orleans.codegen.cs content file at install time, and instead create it at build time (should be more compatible with NuGet Transitive Restore). #1720
• Added GrainCreator abstraction to enable some unit testing scenarios. #1802 & #1792
• ServiceBus package dependency upgraded to 3.2.2 #1758

v1.2.1 May 19th 2016

Release notes

• SupressDuplicateDeads: Use SiloAddress.Endpoint instead of InstanceName. 1728
• Added support for complex generic grain parameters. #1732
• Fix race condition bugs in LocalReminderService. #1757

v1.2.0 May 4th 2016

Release notes

In addition to all the changes in 1.2.0-beta.

• Azure storage 7.0 compatibility.
• Updated to latest version of Consul and ZooKeeper NuGets.
• Added ability to throw exceptions that occur when starting silo.

v1.2.0-beta April 18th 2016

Release notes

• Major improvements

  • Added an EventHub stream provider based on the same code that is used in Halo 5.
  • Increased throughput by between 5% and 26% depending on the scenario.
  • Migrated all but 30 functional tests to GitHub.
  • Grain state doesn't have to extend GrainState anymore (marked as [Obsolete]) and can be a simple POCO class.
  • Added support for per-grain-class and global server-side interceptors.
  • Added support for using Consul 0.6.0 as a Membership Provider.
  • Support C# 6.
  • Switched to xUnit for testing as a step towards CoreCLR compatibility.

• Codegen & serialization

  • Added support for generic type constraints in codegen.
  • Added support for Newtonsoft.Json as a fallback serializer.
  • Added generation of serializers for type arguments of IAsyncObserver<T>.
  • Improved support for F# interfaces.
  • Consolidated two compile time codegen NuGet packages into one Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansCodeGenerator.Build. Microsoft.Orleans.Templates.Interfaces and Microsoft.Orleans.Templates.Grains are now meta-packages for backward compatibility only.
  • Moved to Newtonsoft.Json 7.0.1.

• Programmatic config

  • Added helper methods for programmatic test configuration.
  • Added helper methods to AzureClient and AzureSilo for easier programmatic config.
  • Added extension methods for using programmatic config.
  • Remove config filed from Server and Client NuGet packages.

• Other

  • Improved support for SQL membership, reminders, and grain storage.
  • Improved propagation of exception, so that the caller gets the originally thrown exception instead of an AggregateException wrapping it.
  • Added a storage provider for Azure Blob (graduated from OrleansContrib).
  • Start Reminder Service initial load in the background.
  • Added automatic cleanup of dead client stream producers and consumers and this.
  • Added GetPrimaryKeyString extension method for IAddressable.
  • Added support for additional application directories.

• Many other fixes and improvements.

v1.1.3 March 9th 2016

Release notes

A patch release with a set of bug fixes.

• Initialize SerializationManager before CodeGeneratorManager
• Avoid unnecessary table scan when finding reminder entries to delete
• Stop a stuck BlockingCollection.Take operation that caused thread leak on the client.
• Fixed Azure table property being not sanitized.
• Fixed String.Format arguments in DetailedGrainReport.ToString()
• Increment and DecrementMetric methods in Orleans.TraceLogger had same body
• Update the custom serializer warning message to adequately reflect the OSS status of Orleans
• Fix retry timeout when running under debugger
• Networking bug fix: Reset receive buffer on error.
• Fixed performance regression in networking
• Start ReminderService initial load in the background
• Safe load of types from failing assemblies in TypeUtils.GetTypes

Community Virtual Meetup #9

Nehme Bilal and Reuben Bond talk about deploying Orleans with YAMS and Service Fabric Fabruary 26st 2016

Community Virtual Meetup #8.5

Networking discussion hosted by Jason Bragg February 11th 2016

Community Virtual Meetup #8

Orleans core team present the roadmap January 21st 2016

v1.1.2 January 20th 2016

Release notes

A patch release with bug fixes, primarily for codegen and serializer corner cases.

• Add support for generic type constraints in codegen
• Correctly specify struct type constraint in generated code
• fix issue:GetReminder throws exception when reminder don't exists #1167
• Cleanup/fix usage of IsNested vs. IsNestedXXX & serialize nested types.
• Correctly serialize [Obsolete] fields and properties.
• Nested serialization of Guid with Json serializer.
• Fix a race in StreamConsumer.SubscribeAsync.
• fix deepcopy issue #1278
• Check declaring types when performing accessibility checks for code gen.
• Allow to configure PubSub for SMS.
• Make Namespace access modifier public in ImplicitStreamSubscriptionAttribute. Add Provider property.

v1.1.1 January 11th 2016

Release notes

A patch release for two bug fixes

• Missing argument to trace format in TraceLogger.Initialize
• Make ConsoleText resilient to ObjectDisposedExceptions

Community Virtual Meetup #7

Christmas Special - Yevhen Bobrov on Orleankka December 17th 2015

v1.1.0 December 14nd 2015

Release notes

• New Roslyn-based codegen, compile time and run time
• Public APIs:
  • Core API for Event Sourcing
  • Most methods of Grain class are now virtual
  • ASP.NET vNext style Dependency Injection for grains
  • New telemetry API
• Portability:
  • Support for C# 6.0
  • Improved support for F# and VB
  • Code adjustments towards CoreCLR compliance
  • Orleans assemblies are not strong-named anymore
• SQL:
  • OrleansSQLUtils.dll for SQL-related functionality
  • MySQL is now supported as a cluster membership store
  • Storage provider for SQL Server
• Serialization:
  • Support for pluggable external serializers
  • Bond serializer plugin
  • Support for Json.Net as a fallback serializer
  • Added [KnownType] attribute for generating serializers for arbitrary types
• Upgraded to Azure Storage 5.0
• Upgraded to .NET 4.5.1
• Other fixes and improvements

Community Virtual Meetup #6

MSR PhDs on Geo Distributed Orleansp October 23rd 2015

v1.0.10 September 22nd 2015

Release notes

General:

• No SDK msi anymore, only NuGets from now on
• Removed support for grain state interfaces and code generation of state classes
• Removed code generated MyGrainFactory.GetGrain() factory methods
• StorageProvider attribute is now optional
• Membership and reminder table implementations were made pluggable
• Improvements to ObserverSubscriptionManager
• Strong guarantee for specified max number of StatelessWorker activations per silo
• General purpose interface for sending run time control commands to providers
• Named event to trigger silo shutdown

Streaming:

• Support for multiple ImplicitSubscription attributes for streams
• Support for rewinding of implicit stream subscriptions
• Propagate request context via persistent streams
• More options for stream Queue Balancers
• Delayed repartitioning of stream queues
• Improved cleanup of client stream producers/consumers when client shuts down
• Config option and management grain API for controlling start/stop state of stream pulling agents
• Azure Queue stream provider fixed to guarantees at least once delivery
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements, mostly to streaming

v1.0.9 July 15th 2015

This release includes several significant API changes that require adjustments in existing code created with v1.0.8 or earlier versions of Orleans

1. GrainFactory is not a static class anymore, so that the default implementation can be substituted for testing and other reasons.

Within grain code one can still use code like GrainFactory.GetGrain<IFoo>(grainKey) because Grain class now has a GrainFactory property, which makes the above code translate to base.GrainFactory.GetGrain<IFoo>(grainKey). So no change is necessary for such code.

Within the client (frontend) context the default GrainFactory is available as a property on the GrainClient class. So, the code that used to be GrainFactory.GetGrain<IFoo>(grainKey) needs to be changed to GrainClient.GrainFactory.GetGrain<IFoo>(grainKey)

2. Read/Write/ClearStateAsync methods methods that on grain state were moved from state objects to Grain class

Wherever you have grain code like this.State.WriteStateAsync(), it needs to change to this.WriteStateAsync(). Similar adjustments need to be made to usage of ReadeStateAsync() and CleareStateAsync().

3. Binaries have been removed from the Orleans SDK

If your projects still reference those binaries directly from the SDK folder, you need to switch to using NuGet packages instead. If you are already consuming Orleans via NuGet, you are good.

4. Local Silo test environment has been removed from the Orleans SDK

If you were using the Local Silo environment from the SDK folder for testing your grains, you need to add a silo host project to your solution using the "Orleans Dev/Test Host" Visual Studio project template. Before you do that, make sure you install the v1.0.9 version of the SDK. Refer to samples for examples of how that is done.

Release notes

• Graceful shutdown of a silo with deactivation of all grains hosted in it.
• Support for Dependency Injection and better testability of grains:
  • Direct instantiation of grains with passing IGrainIdentity and IGrainRuntime to constructor.
  • IGrainRuntime is a mockable interface that includes a set of system service interfaces, also mockable.
  • GrainFactory is a non-static class that is accessed via base.GrainFactory from within a grain and via GrainClient.GrainFactory on the client.
• Deprecated generated per-interface GetGrain() static factory methods.
• Added support for concrete grain state classes, deprecated grain state interfaces and code generation of grain classes.
• Removed Read/Write/ClearStateAsync methods from IGrainState and moved them to Grain<T>.
• Performance optimizations of messaging with up to 40% improvements in throughput.
• Added ZooKeeper based cluster membership storage option.
• Removed compile time dependency on Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.dll.
• Consolidated dependencies on Azure in OrleansAzureUtils.dll, which is now optional.
• Refactored SQL system store to be more robust and vendor agnostic.
• Added streaming event deliver policy and failure reporting.
• Changed VS project templates to use only NuGet packages and not the SDK.
• Removed binaries and local silo environment from the SDK.
• Numerous bug fixes and other improvements.

v1.0.8 May 26th 2015

Release notes

• Fixed versions of references Orleans NuGet packages to match the current one.
• Switched message header keys from strings to enums for performance.
• Fixed a deadlock issue in deactivation process.
• Added a NuGet package to simplify testing of grain projects - Microsoft.Orleans.TestingHost.
• Fixed regression of reporting codegen error to Visual Studio Errors window.
• Added version to SDK msi product and folder name.
• Other fixes and improvements.

Community Virtual Meetup #5

Gabriel Kliot on the new Orleans Streaming API May 22nd 2015

v1.0.7 May 15th 2015

Release notes

• Major refactoring of the stream adapter API.
• Improvements to the streaming API to support subscription multiplicity.
• Made IAddressable.AsReference strongly-typed.
• Added a Chocolatey package.
• Added support for private storage keys for testing.
• Replaced ExtendedPrimaryKeyAttribute with IGrainWithGuidCompoundKey and IGrainWithIntegerCompoundKey.
• Added support for grain classes that are implementations of generic grain interfaces with concrete type arguments.
• Numerous other fixes and improvements.

Community Virtual Meetup #4

Reuben Bond on using Orleans at FreeBay April 15th 2015

v1.0.5 March 30th 2015

Release notes

• Major reorganization of NuGet packages and project templates.
• Fixes to reflection-only assembly inspection and loading for side-by-side versioning.
• Improved scalability of observers.
• Programmatic configuration of providers.
• Numerous other fixes and improvements.

Community Virtual Meetup #3

Yevhen Bobrov on a Uniform API for Orleans March 6th 2015

Community Virtual Meetup #2

Orleans team live Q&A and roadmap January 12th 2015

Orleans Open Source v1.0 Update (January 2015)

Initial stable production-quality release.

Since the September 2014 Preview Update we have made a small number of public API changes, mainly related to clean up and more consistent naming. Those changes are summarized below:

Public Type Names Changes

Old API	New API
OrleansLogger	Logger
OrleansClient	GrainClient
Grain.ActivateAsync	Grain.OnActivateAsync
Grain.DeactivateAsync	Grain.OnDeactivateAsync
Orleans.Host.OrleansSiloHost	Orleans.Runtime.Host.SiloHost
Orleans.Host.OrleansAzureSilo	Orleans.Runtime.Host.AzureSilo
Orleans.Host.OrleansAzureClient	Orleans.Runtime.Host.zureClient
Orleans.Providers.IOrleansProvider	Orleans.Providers.IProvider
Orleans.Runtime.ActorRuntimeException	Orleans.Runtime.OrleansException
OrleansConfiguration	ClusterConfiguration
LoadAwarePlacementAttribute	ActivationCountBasedPlacementAttribute

Other Changes

• All grain placement attribute (including [StatelessWorker]) now need to be defined on grain implementation class, rather than on grain interface.
• LocalPlacementAttribute was removed. There are now only StatelessWorker and PreferLocalPlacement.
• Support for Reactive programming with Async RX.
• Orleans NuGet packages are now published on NuGet.org. See this wiki page for advice on how to convert legacy Orleans grain interface / class projects over to using NuGet packages.

Community Virtual Meetup #1

Jakub Konecki on Event Sourced Grains December 18th 2014