Subject: [akka-user] ANNOUNCE: Akka 2.0-RC2 (is she golden or what?!)
Ladies and gentlemen,

We, the Akka committers, are proud to announce the availability of Akka 2.0
RELEASE CANDIDATE 2 â the next generation of Akka!

Building on the experiences from the Akka 1 series, we take Akka to the
next level â resilience by default, scale up and out by configuration,
extensibility by design and with a smaller footprint.

Highlights of Akka 2.0 RELEASE CANDIDATE 2:

* 33 tickets closed in 7 days (131 files changed, 2691 insertions(+), 1617
deletions(-))

* Docs
- Akka now has 357 pages of documentation (vs. 350 in RC1) Available
both as html and as pdf.
- RemoteRouterConfig
- Remote Lifecycle Events
- A lot of minor edits and new sections that didn't make it into RC1

* Config
- Updated to latest version of HOCON (fixes some issues with
Serialization)

* ForkJoin
- Updated to latest version from jsr166y

* Mailboxes
- Separation between Mailbox and MessageQueue,
making it possible to use essentially any MailboxType with
BalancingDispatcher
- Opening up PriortyBased mailboxes to users

* Remote
- Changed the point of reporting some of the LifeCycleEvents to be able
to provide more info
- Add possibility to configure on which local interface outbound
connections should be bound to

* TypedActor
- Remote TypedActors can now use JavaSerialization properly

* Misc
- Await now requires handling of checked Exceptions (sorry Java, but you
started it)
- ExecutionContext/ExecutionContexts now return composite types with
both ExecutionContext and Executor(Service) for convenience
- ActorSystem.isTerminated added
- Removed superfluous logging from DurableMailboxes
- Misc Bugfixes (see changelog for full list)

Highlights of Akka 2.0 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1:

* 26 tickets closed in 8 days (190 files changed, 3765 insertions(+), 2041
deletions(-))

* Docs
â Akka now has 350 pages of documentation (vs. 337 in M4) Available both
as html and as pdf.
â Http documentation updated
â Java documentation for 0MQ module
â JMM docs regarding Akka Futures
â Minor edits overall

* Routing
â Erronous resize resolved in Resizers

* Dispatchers
â BalancingDispatcher now has a config option for "attempt-teamwork"
â BalancingDispatcher race condition resolved

* Futures
â Future.blocking() now has a Java API in Futures.blocking()
â Future.blocking() now doesn't require an ExecutionContext

* Config
â Updated to latest HOCON version (configs are now Serializable)
â Added setting for shutting down the JVM on fatal problems
(jvm-exit-on-fatal-error)
â Serializer config has changed to be more convenient for the
bestâeffort search


Highlights of Akka 2.0 Milestone 4:


* 57 tickets closed in 13 days. (447 files changed, 20231 insertions(+),
15202 deletions(-))

* Docs
â Akka now has 337 pages of documentation (vs. 305 in M3) Available both
as html and as pdf.

* Actor
â Default dispatcher based on new ForkJoinPool destined for Java8,
extremely better scalability.
â ActorPath.fromString â easier creating of ActorPaths
â Remove FSM Ev()

* Futures
â Brand new Java API supporting all operations on Future
â Future.recoverWith â the "flatMap" of "recover"
â Future.fallbackTo â the harmonized name of what was previously
or/orElse
â Promise.complete â now throws an IllegalStateException if already
completed, use tryComplete for conditional complete
â Future.andThen â makes it possible to create ordered asynchronous side
effects
â All callbacks are now friendlier to the type inferencer

* Remote
â Read timeout tracking now supports read timeouts, write timeouts and
both, and can be turned off completely
â No need to configure nodename anymore

* Serialization
â Serialization now supports bestâeffort lookup of suitable Serializer,
see docs for more info

* Misc
â Better Android compatibility
â Lots of minor bugfixes
â Lots of small performance improvements
â Reworked class loading strategy to be more unified



Highlights of Akka 2.0 Milestone 3:



* Almost 90(!) tickets closed in 3 weeks. (505 files changed, 13617
insertions(+), 8636 deletions(-))

* Docs â Akka now has 305 pages of documentation (vs. 254 in M2) Available
both as html and as pdf.

* Patterns
â "Ask/?" being moved out to a Pattern" â for Scala add 'import
akka.pattern.ask' (which will provide suitable implicit conversions to
support nearly the same methods, check with 'import akka.migration.ask'
first for deprecations; and for Java use akka.pattern.Patterns.ask().
â gracefulStop
â pipeTo

* Actor
â Removed timeout from Props
â Removed FaultHandler from Props
â Renamed FaultHandler to SupervisorStrategy to be more clear
â Improved SupervisorStrategy creation and parametrization

* ActorSystem
â ActorSystemImpl renamed to ExtendedActorSystem for Extensions
â Now has awaitTermination
â Can now be configured to only create threads that are daemons

* TypedActor
â TypedActorProps that is used with typedActorOf, instead of overloading
â Possibility to proxy any ActorRef (think Remote etc)

* Futures
â "orElse" is replaced with "or"
â "zip" has been added
â Reduced memory footprint per Future

* Remote
â Support for starting up Akka on a randomly chosen port
â Lots of optimizations

* Akka STM
â Now uses ScalaSTM instead of Multiverse directly

* IOActor
â Many improvements for 2.0

* Routers
â Custom Routers (create your own!)
â Remote Routers, any Router can now be remote
â Resizers, replaces the old Actor Pool API, add Resizer to Router to
get Actor Pool functionality
â Resizers, configure them in config file
â Resizers, also usable from Java, so now there's a Java API for "Actor
Pools"

* Ãmq
â This module is now ported from Akka 1.3 for Scala

* Akka FSM
â There is now documentation on how to use Akka FSM from Java!

* Migration
â We now have a draft of a migration package that will help you from 1.x
to 2.0, try it out and give us feedback


And much, much more!


Highlights of Akka 2.0 Milestone 2:


* 70 closed tickets since M1

* More documentation, 254 pages vs 216 for M1
â Serialization API
â EventBus API
â Agents
â Dead Letters
â General docs improvements

* More samples (Remoting etc)

* Remoting
â Remote Death Watch
â Improved logging
â Improved performance
â More configuration options

* Routers
â Load from config
â BroadcastRouter

* Decoupled Futures from Dispatchers, use any old ExecutorService or
Executor

* Akka now uses Scala STM

* Improved Java APIs

* Many minor improvements, bugfixes and tweaks



Highlights of Akka 2.0 Milestone 1:


* Asynchronous by design â most actor related operations are now
asynchronous

* Removing all global state â introducing ActorSystem

* Mandatory Parental Supervision â fault-tolerant default and automatic

* Remote Supervision â children spawned on other nodes are supervised

* Actor Tree Hierarchy â file-system like addressing, with wildcards etc.

* Props â Actor configuration is immutable, sharable and reusable

* Futures & Promises â simpler and more powerful, blocking API refactored
out

* Actor Routing â completely revamped, load balancing made much simpler

* Death Watch â react to the death of any actor

* Typed Actors â 0 dependency JDK Proxy based implementation

* EventBus API â publish-subscribe to anything you want

* Extensions â add new functionality to Akka

* Pluggable remote transport layer â Netty/TCP builtâin

* General API unification and simplification â less to remember

* Simpler actor life-cycle semantics and management

* Slimmer footprint â around 2.7 million Actors per GB of memory

* Lots of performance and scalability improvements





Akka is released under the Apache V2 license.

Akka website: http://akka.io

Akka Maven repository: http://akka.io/releases

Akka binary distribution: http://akka.io/downloads

Akka 2.0-RC2 documentation: http://akka.io/docs/akka/2.0-RC2/

Issue tracker:
http://www.assembla.com/spaces/akka/milestones/1045123-2-0-rc2

Akka mailing list: https://groups.google.com/group/akka-user


Happy hAkking!

â

--
Viktor Klang

Akka Tech Lead
Typesafe <http://www.typesafe.com/> - The software stack for applications
that scale

Twitter: @viktorklang

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