v3.4.0

[Tochemey]

🚀 v3.4.0 Release

This release includes breaking changes, new features, and critical improvements around actor lifecycle, dependency injection, and distributed behavior.

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⚠️ Breaking Changes

• Lifecycle Methods Updated

  • PreStart and PostStop now receive a custom Context object (not context.Context), giving access to the ActorSystem at runtime.
  • 🔥 This is a breaking change to the Actor interface.

• Global Stashing Removed

  • WithStash has been removed from ActorSystem configuration options.
  • Stashing should be managed per actor using SpawnOption, not globally.
  • ❗️Breaking change — this corrects a design flaw.

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✨ New Features

• Per-Actor Stashing

  • Added WithStashing to SpawnOption to enable stashing per actor.

• Dependency Injection Support

  • Added WithDependencies to SpawnOption to declare dependencies needed by an actor.
  • To use this, implement the Dependency interface from the extension package.

• Access to Actor Dependencies

  • New methods Dependencies() and Dependency(name string) added to PID for accessing actor-specific dependencies.

• Central Dependency Registration

  • Introduced Inject method on ActorSystem to register shared dependencies' types.
  • Useful for remote actor spawning and failover scenarios in distributed systems.

• Testkit

  • Added Watch method to Probe to any other actor for termination
  • Added WatchNamed method to Probe to watch an actor created by the Probe for termination
  • Added ExpectTerminated method to Probe to assert Termination message
  • Added ActorSystem method to Testkit to return the testkit actor system
  • Added SpawnChild method to TestKit to create a child actor

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🛠️ Improvements

• Cluster Behavior Fixes

  • Resolved issues with actor re-creation during cluster topology changes and remote spawning.
  • Improves resiliency and reliability in distributed deployments.

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Pull Requests

• feat: redesign PreStart and PostStop hook to accept a Context by @Tochemey in feat: redesign PreStart and PostStop hook to accept a Context #701
• feat: ✨ add actor's dependency mechanism by @Tochemey in feat: ✨ add actor's dependency mechanism #704
• feat: ✨ enhance testkit by @Tochemey in feat: ✨ enhance testkit #710
• chore: update golangci/golangci-lint-action action to v8 by @Tochemey in chore: update golangci/golangci-lint-action action to v8 #712

Full Changelog: v3.3.1...v3.4.0

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This discussion was created from the release v3.4.0.