Apache Karaf Cellar 2.2.4

Apache Karaf Cellar 2.2.4 has been released. This release is a major release, including a bunch of bug fixes and new features.

Here’s the list of key things included in this release.

Consistent behavior

Cellar is composed by two parts:

  • the distributed resources which is a datagrid maintained by each cluster nodes and containing the current cluster status (for instance of the bundles, features, etc)
  • the cluster event which is broadcasted from a node to the others

Cluster shell commands, cluster MBeans, synchronizers (called at startup) and listeners (called when a local event is fired, such as feature installed) update the distributed resource and broadcast cluster events.

To broadcast cluster events, we use an event producer. The cluster event is consommed by a consumer which delegates the handling of the cluster event to a handler. We have a handler for feature, bundle, etc.

Now, all Cellar “producers” do:

  1. check if the cluster event producer is ON
  2. check if the resource is allowed, checking in the blacklist/whitelist configuration
  3. update the distributed resources
  4. broadcast the cluster event

Only use hazelcast.xml

The org.apache.karaf.cellar.instance.cfg file has disappear. It’s now fully replaced by the hazelcast.xml.

It fixes issue around the network configuration and allows new configuration, especially around the encryption.

OSGi event support

cellar-event feature now provides OSGi event support in Cellar. It uses eventadmin layer. All local event generates a cluster event which is broadcasted to the cluster. It allows to sync remote nodes.

Better shell commands

Now, all cluster:* shell commands mimic the core Karaf commands. It means that we will find quite the same arguments and options and similar output.

The cluster:group-* shell commands have been improved and fixed.

A new shell command has been introduced: cluster:config-propappend to append a String to a config property.

Check everywhere

We added a bunch of check to be sure to have a consistent situation on the cluster and predictable behavior.

It means that the MBeans and shell commands check if a cluster group exists, if a cluster event producer is on, if a resource is allowed on the cluster (for the given cluster group), etc.

You have clean messages informing you about the current status of your commands.

Improvement on the config layer

The Cellar config layer has been improved. It now uses a karaf.cellar.sync property to avoid infinite loop. The config delete operation support has been added, including the cluster:config-delete commands.

Feature repositories

Previously, the feature repositories handling was hidden for the users.

Now, you have a full access to the distributed features repositories set. It means that you can see the distributed repositories for a cluster group, add a new features repository to a cluster group, and remove a features repository from a cluster group.

To do that, you have the cluster:feature-url-* shell commands.

CellarOBRMBean

Cellar provides a MBean for all parts of the cluster resources (bundles, features, config, etc).

However, if an user installed cellar-obr feature, he got the cluster:obr-* shell commands but no corresponding MBean.

The CellarOBRMBean has been introduced and is installed with the cellar-obr feature.

Summary

Karaf Cellar 2.2.4 is really a major release, and I think it should have been named 2.3.0 due to the bunch of the bug fixes and new features: we fixed 77 Jiras in this release and performed lot of manual tests.

The quality has been heavily improved in this release comparing to the previous one.

I encourage all Cellar users to update to Karaf Cellar 2.2.4 and I hope you will be pleased with this new release 😉

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