3 nbdkit-release-notes-1.20 - release notes for nbdkit 1.20
7 These are the release notes for nbdkit stable release 1.20.
8 This describes the major changes since 1.18.
10 nbdkit 1.20.0 was released on B<2nd May 2020>.
14 There were no security issues found. All past security issues and
15 information about how to report new ones can be found in
16 L<nbdkit-security(1)>.
20 New L<nbdkit-tmpdisk-plugin(1)> is a scriptable “remote tmpfs” for
21 creating temporary filesystems (eg. for thin clients), and also for
22 blank or prepopulated temporary disks.
24 L<nbdkit-data-plugin(1)> now has support for prepopulating disks with
25 more complex test patterns such as repeated sequences of bytes.
27 L<nbdkit-curl-plugin(1)> now supports setting a proxy, enabling TCP
28 keepalives, and disabling Nagle’s algorithm.
30 L<nbdkit-perl-plugin(1)> now supports API version 2. In particular
31 the full NBD client flags are visible to plugins, along with support
32 for the C<.get_ready> callback. Also there is a new function
33 C<Nbdkit::debug> which is a wrapper around the C<nbdkit_debug> API.
35 L<nbdkit-vddk-plugin(1)> drops support for VDDK 5.1.1. This version
36 was last updated in 2014 and is no longer supported by VMware. Since
37 this was the last version of VDDK to support i686, 32-bit support is
38 also dropped (Eric Blake).
40 =head2 Language bindings
42 Plugins may now be written in Golang, see L<nbdkit-golang-plugin(3)>
43 (thanks Dan Berrangé, James Shubin).
45 OCaml plugins can now access C<nbdkit_realpath>, C<nbdkit_nanosleep>,
46 C<nbdkit_export_name> and C<nbdkit_shutdown>.
48 Python plugins now transparently support fail-fast zero (Eric Blake).
52 New L<nbdkit-exitlast-filter(1)> causes nbdkit to exit after the last
55 New L<nbdkit-limit-filter(1)> allows you to limit the number of
56 clients which can simultaneously connect to any plugin.
60 The I<--run> option now waits for the nbdkit plugin and nbdkit to exit
61 before returning to the caller. This allows for more predictable
62 clean up in shell scripts using this feature.
64 nbdkit I<--dump-config> output now includes separate lines for
65 C<version_major> and C<version_minor>, making it easier to find out
66 from shell scripts which version of nbdkit is installed.
68 nbdkit I<-s> option (which connects to the client over stdin/stdout)
69 now rejects various options that would also try to read from or write
70 to stdin/stdout, for example I<--dump-plugin> or C<password=->
75 New C<nbdkit_shutdown> call which allows plugins to ask for nbdkit
76 to exit. This is used to implement the new C<exitlast> filter.
78 New C<nbdkit_stdio_safe> call allows plugins to check if reading from
79 stdin or writing to stdout is safe, eg. if it is safe to read
80 passwords interactively (Eric Blake).
82 C<can_*> callbacks which return booleans can return any value E<ge> 1
83 to mean true. Previous versions of nbdkit had inconsistent behaviour
84 if plugins returned anything other than 1 for true (Eric Blake).
88 nbdkit-tar-plugin now works and there is a regression test for
91 L<nbdkit-curl-plugin(1)> S<I<-D curl.version=1>> option now works.
93 Fixed a rare hang when closing a connection in L<nbdkit-nbd-plugin(1)>
96 Fix compilation on certain platforms with clang (Khem Raj).
98 Don’t leak C<$tmpdir> from L<nbdkit-sh-plugin(1)> into the I<--run>
101 nbdkit now correctly sets C<FD_CLOEXEC> when using systemd socket
102 activation (Eric Blake).
106 The L<nbdkit-plugin(3)> man page has been overhauled completely to
107 make it easier to follow. Also we now have documentation for how to
108 compile plugins in various environments which was missing before.
112 All valgrind tests now pass.
114 “Old plugin” tests were added for v1.18.2 on x86-64, and a variety of
115 old plugins compiled on i686. The i686 plugins will allow us to test
116 for regressions in 32 bit support.
118 Tests of the nbd plugin should now be stable (Eric Blake).
120 There is an additional test combining the offset and truncate filters,
121 which tests several corner cases as well as providing tests of error
122 handling between layers.
126 L<nbdkit-nbd-plugin(1)> now requires libnbd. (If libnbd is not
127 present at build time then this plugin is not built). The fallback
128 code in this plugin which made NBD connections by constructing NBD
129 command packets without using libnbd has been removed (Eric Blake).
131 F<scripts/git.orderfile> has been improved so that commands like
132 S<C<git diff>> and S<C<git show>> display OCaml sources in a natural
133 order with interface first followed by implementation.
135 Various fixes for MinGW. Note MinGW / MSYS support is a work in
136 progress and not finished yet (Frank Gu).
138 Multiple fixes to Haiku build.
140 L<awk(1)> is no longer required to run the tests. It was a “hidden”
141 required dependency, but all use of it has now been eliminated.
145 There is now an internal utility library for creating vectors/lists of
146 objects, for example lists of strings (F<common/utils/vector.h>). It
147 is widely used by the server, plugins and filters.
149 F<README> discusses how to use L<lcov(1)> for code coverage reports.
157 Authors of nbdkit 1.20:
169 =item Richard W.M. Jones
181 Copyright (C) 2020 Red Hat Inc.