The Apache Kafka community is pleased to announce the release for Apache Kafka 4.2.0
This release has many exciting changes: * Kafka Queues (Share Groups) is now production-ready with new features like the RENEW acknowledgement type for extended processing times, adaptive batching for share coordinators, soft and strict enforcements of quantity of fetched records, and comprehensive lag metrics. * Kafka Streams brings the server-side rebalance protocol to GA with a limited feature set, adds dead letter queue support in exception handlers, introduces anchored wall-clock punctuation for deterministic scheduling, and gives users full control over whether to send a leave group request on closing. * This release also delivers significant improvements to consistency and observability: CLI tools now feature standardized arguments like –bootstrap-server across all tools, metric naming has been corrected to follow the kafka.COMPONENT convention, and new idle ratio metrics provide better visibility into controller and MetadataLoader performance. * Security is enhanced with a new allowlist connector client configuration override policy, while thread-safety improvements to RecordHeader eliminate concurrency risks. * Additional highlights include external schema support in JsonConverter for reduced message sizes, dynamic configuration for remote log manager thread pools, adaptive batching in group coordinators, and rack ID exposure in the Admin API for consumer and share group members. All of the changes in this release can be found in the release notes: https://www.apache.org/dist/kafka/4.2.0/RELEASE_NOTES.html An overview of the release can be found in our announcement blog post: https://kafka.apache.org/blog You can download the source and binary release (Scala 2.13) from: https://kafka.apache.org/downloads#4.2.0 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform with four core APIs: ** The Producer API allows an application to publish a stream of records to one or more Kafka topics. ** The Consumer API allows an application to subscribe to one or more topics and process the stream of records produced to them. ** The Streams API allows an application to act as a stream processor, consuming an input stream from one or more topics and producing an output stream to one or more output topics, effectively transforming the input streams to output streams. ** The Connector API allows building and running reusable producers or consumers that connect Kafka topics to existing applications or data systems. For example, a connector to a relational database might capture every change to a table. With these APIs, Kafka can be used for two broad classes of application: ** Building real-time streaming data pipelines that reliably get data between systems or applications. ** Building real-time streaming applications that transform or react to the streams of data. Apache Kafka is in use at large and small companies worldwide, including Capital One, Goldman Sachs, ING, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pinterest, Rabobank, Target, The New York Times, Uber, Yelp, and Zalando, among others. A big thank you for the following 155 contributors to this release! (Please report an unintended omission) Abhi Tiwari, Abhijeet Kumar, Abhinav Dixit, Abhiram98, Alex, Alieh Saeedi, ally heev, Alyssa Huang, Andrew J Schofield, Anton Vasanth, Apoorv Mittal, Arpit Goyal, Artem Livshits, Bill Bejeck, Bolin Lin, Bruno Cadonna, Calvin Liu, Chang-Chi Hsu, Chang-Yu Huang, Chia-Ping Tsai, Chih-Yuan Chien, Chirag Wadhwa, Chris Egerton, Christo Lolov, Chuckame, Clemens Hutter, Colin Patrick McCabe, d00791190, Dave Troiano, David Arthur, David Jacot, Deep Golani, Dejan Stojadinović, devtrace404, Dmitry Werner, Dongnuo Lyu, Donny Nadolny, Eduwer Camacaro, Elizabeth Bennett, EME, Eric Chang, Erik Anderson, Evan Zhou, Evgeniy Kuvardin, farzan ghalami, Fatih, Federico Valeri, Gantigmaa Selenge, Gasparina Damien, Gaurav Narula, Genseric Ghiro, George Wu, Greg Harris, Harish Vishwanath, Herman Kolstad Jakobsen, Hong-Yi Chen, Ismael Juma, Izzy Harker, Jared Harley, Jhen-Yung Hsu, Jian, Jim Galasyn, Jimmy Wang, Jing-Jia Hung, Jinhe Zhang, Joel Hamill, Jonah Hooper, Josep Prat, José Armando García Sancio, Juha Mynttinen, Jun Rao, Justine Olshan, k-apol, Kamal Chandraprakash, Kaushik Raina, keemsisi, Ken Huang, Kevin Wu, Kirk True, knoxy5467, KTKTK-HZ, Kuan-Po Tseng, Lan Ding, Levani Kokhreidze, Liam Clarke-Hutchinson, Lianet Magrans, Linsiyuan9, Logan Zhu, lorcan, Lord of Abyss, Lucas Brutschy, Lucy Liu, Luke Chen, Mahsa Seifikar, majialong, Manikumar Reddy, Maros Orsak, Masahiro Mori, Mason Chen, Matt Welch, Matthias J. Sax, Michael Knox, Michael Morris, Mickael Maison, Ming-Yen Chung, NeatGuyCoding, Nick Guo, NICOLAS GUYOMAR, Nikita Shupletsov, Now, Okada Haruki, Omnia Ibrahim, Otmar Ertl, OuO, Paolo Patierno, Patrik Nagy, Pawel Szymczyk, PoAn Yang, Ken Huang, Priyanka K U, Rajani K, Rajini Sivaram, Ram, Ritika Reddy, Robert Young, Ryan Dielhenn, S.Y. Wang, samarth-ksolves, Sanskar Jhajharia, Satish Duggana, Sean Quah, Sebastien Viale, Shang-Hao Yang, Shashank, Shivsundar R, Siyang He, Sophie Blee-Goldman, Stig Døssing, stroller, Sushant Mahajan, TaiJuWu, TengYao Chi, Tsung-Han Ho (Miles Ho), Ubuntu, Uladzislau Blok, Vincent PÉRICART, Xiao Yang, xijiu, Xuan-Zhang Gong, yangxuze, Yeikel Santana, Yu-Syuan Jheng, YuChia Ma, Yunchi Pang, Yung We welcome your help and feedback. For more information on how to report problems, and to get involved, visit the project website at https://kafka.apache.org/ Thank you! Regards, Christo Release Manager for Apache Kafka 4.2.0
