Release 2.4.0

[nvnieuwk]

Version 2.4.0

New features

1. Added a new configuration option: validation.maxErrValSize which sets the maximum length that a value in an error message can be. The default is set to 150 characters.
2. Added a new function: validate() that can be used to validate any data structure using a JSON schema.

Bug fixes

1. Move the unpinned version check to an observer. This makes sure the warning is always shown and not only when importing a function.
2. Added a missing inherited method to the observer to fix issues with workflow output publishing
3. Fixed unexpected failures with samplesheet schemas using anyOf, allOf and oneOf
4. Fixed an error with help messages when the type keyword was missing
5. Fix compilation errors in Java 21

Improvements

1. Slow uniqueness check (> 2hrs for 100k samples) made 400x faster by switching from findAll to a subMap for isolating the required unique fields.
2. patternProperties now has greater support, with no warnings about invalid parameters which actually match a pattern
3. Added better error handling and debug messages to the configuration parser.

Changes

1. Refactored the whole codebase to make future development easier
2. Bumped the minimal Nextflow version to 24.10.0

[mirpedrol]

Two last comments, otherwise looks good