whats-new: First pass on changes since 7.0.0

doc/sphinx/whats-new/changes-trunk.rst

@@ -23,51 +23,183 @@ varnishd
 Parameters
 ~~~~~~~~~~
 
-**XXX changes in -p parameters**
+A new kind of parameters exists: deprecated aliases. Their documentation is
+minimal, mainly referring to the actual symbols they alias. They are not
+listed in the CLI, unless referred to explicitly.
+
+There is no deprecated alias yet, but some are already planned for future
+releases. Alias parameters have next to no overhead when used directly.
+
+The deprecated ``vsm_space`` parameter was removed.
+
+A new ``cc_warnings`` parameter contains a subset of the compiler flags
+extracted from ``cc_command``, which in turn grew new expansions:
+
+- ``%d``: the raw default ``cc_command``
+- ``%D``: the expanded default ``cc_command``
+- ``%w``: the ``cc_warnings`` parameter
+- ``%n``: the working directory (``-n`` option)
+
+This should facilitate the creation of wrapper scripts around VCL compilation.
+
+There is a new ``experimental`` parameter that is identical to the ``feature``
+parameter, except that it guards features that may not be considered complete
+or stable. An experimental feature may be promoted to a regular feature or
+dropped without being considered a breaking change.
+
+Command line options
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The deprecated sub-argument of the ``-l`` option was removed, it is now a
+shorthand for the ``vsl_space`` parameter only.
+
+The ``-T``, ``-M`` and ``-P`` command line options can be used multiple times,
+instead of retaining only the last occurrence.
+
+When there is no active VCL, the first loaded VCL was always implicitly used
+too. This is now only true for VCLs loaded with either the ``-f`` or ``-b``
+options, since they imply a ``vcl.use``. VCL loaded through the Varnish CLI
+(``vcl.load`` or ``vcl.inline``) via a CLI script loaded through the ``-I``
+command line option require an explicit ``vcl.use``.
 
 Other changes in varnishd
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
+ESI includes now support the ``onerror="continue"`` attribute. However, in
+order to take effect a new ``+esi_include_onerror`` feature flag needs to be
+raised.
+
 Changes to VCL
 ==============
 
+It is now possible to assign a ``BODY`` variable with either a ``STRING`` type
+or a ``BLOB``.
+
 VCL variables
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
-**XXX new, deprecated or removed variables, or changed semantics**
+New VCL variables to track the beginning of HTTP messages:
+
+- ``req.time``
+- ``req_top.time``
+- ``resp.time``
+- ``bereq.time``
+- ``beresp.time``
+- ``obj.time``
+
+New ``req.transport`` which returns "HTTP/1" or "HTTP/2" as appropriate.
 
 Other changes to VCL
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
+Where a regular expression literal is expected, it is now possible to have a
+concatenation of constant strings. It can be useful when part of the
+expression comes from an environment-specific include, or to break a long
+expression into multiple lines.
+
+Similarly to ``varnishd`` parameters, it is now possible to have deprecated
+aliases of VCL variables. Although there are none so far, aliases will allow
+some symbols to be renamed without immediately breaking existing VCL code.
+
+Deprecated VCL aliases have no runtime overhead, they are reified at VCL
+compile time.
+
 VMODs
 =====
 
-**XXX changes in the bundled VMODs**
+New :ref:`std.strftime()` function for UTC formatting.
+
+It is now possible to declare deprecated aliases of VMOD functions and object
+methods, just like VCL aliases. The ``cookie.format_rfc1123()`` was renamed to
+:ref:`cookie.format_date()`, and the former was retained as a deprecated alias
+of the latter for compatibility.
+
+Deprecated VMOD aliases have no runtime overhead, they are reified at VCL
+compile time.
 
 varnishlog
 ==========
 
-**XXX changes concerning varnishlog(1) and/or vsl(7)**
+It is now possible to write to the standard output with ``-w -``, to be on par
+with the ability to read from the standard input with ``-r -``. This is not
+possible in daemon mode.
+
+In a pipe scenario, the backend transaction emits a Start timestamp and both
+client and backend transactions emit the Process timestamp.
+
+varnishncsa
+===========
+
+It is now possible to write to the standard output with ``-w -``, to be on par
+with the ability to read from the standard input with ``-r -``. This is not
+possible in daemon mode.
 
 varnishadm
 ==========
 
-**XXX changes concerning varnishadm(1) and/or varnish-cli(7)**
+When ``vcl.show`` is invoked without a parameter, it defaults to the active
+VCL.
 
-varnishstat
-===========
+The ``param.set`` command accepts a ``-j`` option. In this case the JSON
+output is the same as ``param.show -j`` of the updated parameter.
 
-**XXX changes concerning varnishstat(1) and/or varnish-counters(7)**
+A new ``debug.shutdown.delay`` command is available in the Varnish CLI for
+testing purposes. It can be useful for testing purposes to see how its
+environment (service manager, container orchestrator, etc) reacts to a
+``varnishd``'s child process taking significant time to ``stop``.
 
 varnishtest
 ===========
 
-**XXX changes concerning varnishtest(1) and/or vtc(7)**
+The ``SO_RCVTIMEO_WORKS`` feature check is gone.
+
+The reporting of ``logexpect`` events was rearranged for readability.
+
+XXX: mention the logexpect abort trigger? (it's not documented)
+
+The ``vtc.barrier_sync()`` VMOD function can be used in ``vcl_init`` from now
+on.
 
 Changes for developers and VMOD authors
 =======================================
 
-**XXX changes concerning VRT, the public APIs, source code organization,
-builds etc.**
+The ``SO_RCVTIMEO`` and ``SO_SNDTIMEO`` socket options are now required at
+build time since their absence would otherwise prevent some timeouts to take
+effect. We no longer check whether they effectively work, hence the removal of
+the ``SO_RCVTIMEO_WORKS`` feature check in ``varnishtest``.
+
+Varnish will use libunwind by default when available at configure time, the
+``--without-unwind`` configure flag can prevent this and fall back to
+libexecinfo to generate backtraces.
+
+There is a new debug storage backend for testing purposes. So far, it can only
+be used to ensure that allocation attempts return less space than requested.
+
+There are new C macros for ``VCL_STRANDS`` creation: ``TOSTRAND()`` and
+``TOSTRANDS()`` are available in ``vrt.h``.
+
+New utility macros ``vmin[_t]``, ``vmax[_t]`` and ``vlimit[_t]`` available in
+``vdef.h``.
+
+The fetch and delivery filters should now be registered and unregistered with
+``VRT_AddFilter()`` and ``VRT_RemoveFilter()``.
+
+Dynamic backends are now reference-counted, and VMOD authors must explicitly
+track assignments with ``VRT_Assign_Backend()``.
+
+The ``vtc.workspace_reserve()`` VMOD function will zero memory from now on.
+
+When the ``+workspace`` debug flag is raised, workspace logs are no longer
+emitted as raw logs disconnected from the task. Having workspace logs grouped
+with the rest of the task should help workspace footprint analysis.
+
+It is possible to generate of arbitrary log lines with ``vtc.vsl_replay()``,
+which can help testing log processing utilities.
+
+It is also possible to tweak the VXID cache chunk size per thread pool with
+the ``debug.xid`` command for the Varnish CLI, which can also help testing
+log processing utilities.
+
+``http_IsHdr()`` is now exposed as part of the strict ABI for VMODs.
 
 *eof*