The API changes made so far turned out to increase the memory footprint
and consumption while our intention was actually decreasing them.
Memory consumption issue:
When there are many connections which does not exchange data frequently,
the old Netty 4 API spent a lot more memory than 3 because it always
allocates per-handler buffer for each connection unless otherwise
explicitly stated by a user. In a usual real world load, a client
doesn't always send requests without pausing, so the idea of having a
buffer whose life cycle if bound to the life cycle of a connection
didn't work as expected.
Memory footprint issue:
The old Netty 4 API decreased overall memory footprint by a great deal
in many cases. It was mainly because the old Netty 4 API did not
allocate a new buffer and event object for each read. Instead, it
created a new buffer for each handler in a pipeline. This works pretty
well as long as the number of handlers in a pipeline is only a few.
However, for a highly modular application with many handlers which
handles connections which lasts for relatively short period, it actually
makes the memory footprint issue much worse.
Changes:
All in all, this is about retaining all the good changes we made in 4 so
far such as better thread model and going back to the way how we dealt
with message events in 3.
To fix the memory consumption/footprint issue mentioned above, we made a
hard decision to break the backward compatibility again with the
following changes:
- Remove MessageBuf
- Merge Buf into ByteBuf
- Merge ChannelInboundByte/MessageHandler and ChannelStateHandler into ChannelInboundHandler
- Similar changes were made to the adapter classes
- Merge ChannelOutboundByte/MessageHandler and ChannelOperationHandler into ChannelOutboundHandler
- Similar changes were made to the adapter classes
- Introduce MessageList which is similar to `MessageEvent` in Netty 3
- Replace inboundBufferUpdated(ctx) with messageReceived(ctx, MessageList)
- Replace flush(ctx, promise) with write(ctx, MessageList, promise)
- Remove ByteToByteEncoder/Decoder/Codec
- Replaced by MessageToByteEncoder<ByteBuf>, ByteToMessageDecoder<ByteBuf>, and ByteMessageCodec<ByteBuf>
- Merge EmbeddedByteChannel and EmbeddedMessageChannel into EmbeddedChannel
- Add SimpleChannelInboundHandler which is sometimes more useful than
ChannelInboundHandlerAdapter
- Bring back Channel.isWritable() from Netty 3
- Add ChannelInboundHandler.channelWritabilityChanges() event
- Add RecvByteBufAllocator configuration property
- Similar to ReceiveBufferSizePredictor in Netty 3
- Some existing configuration properties such as
DatagramChannelConfig.receivePacketSize is gone now.
- Remove suspend/resumeIntermediaryDeallocation() in ByteBuf
This change would have been impossible without @normanmaurer's help. He
fixed, ported, and improved many parts of the changes.
- Fixes#1366: No elegant way to free non-in/outbound buffers held by a handler
- handlerRemoved() is now also invoked when a channel is deregistered, as well as when a handler is removed from a pipeline.
- A little bit of clean-up for readability
- Fix a bug in forwardBufferContentAndRemove() where the handler buffers are not freed (mainly because we were relying on channel.isRegistered() to determine if the handler has been removed from inside the handler.
- ChunkedWriteHandler.handlerRemoved() is unnecessary anymore because ChannelPipeline now always forwards the content of the buffer.
- Fixes#1282 (not perfectly, but to the extent it's possible with the current API)
- Add AddressedEnvelope and DefaultAddressedEnvelope
- Make DatagramPacket extend DefaultAddressedEnvelope<ByteBuf, InetSocketAddress>
- Rename ByteBufHolder.data() to content() so that a message can implement both AddressedEnvelope and ByteBufHolder (DatagramPacket does) without introducing two getter methods for the content
- Datagram channel implementations now understand ByteBuf and ByteBufHolder as a message with unspecified remote address.
- Fixes#1308
freeInboundBuffer() and freeOutboundBuffer() were introduced in the early days of the new API when we did not have reference counting mechanism in the buffer. A user did not want Netty to free the handler buffers had to override these methods.
However, now that we have reference counting mechanism built into the buffer, a user who wants to retain the buffers beyond handler's life cycle can simply return the buffer whose reference count is greater than 1 in newInbound/OutboundBuffer().
- Added a test case that reproduces the problem in ReplayingDecoderTest
- Call newHandler.handlerAdded() *before* oldHandler.handlerRemoved() to ensure newHandlerAdded() is called before forwarding the buffer content of the old handler in replace0().
- Fixes#1292
- Replace DefaultChannelPipeline.inbound/outboundShutdown flag with per-context flags
- Update the flags in free() / freeInbound() / freeOutbound() for clarity
- Replace ugly 'prev != null' check with explicit event scheduling
- Fix an incorrect flag operation in freeHandlerBuffersAfterRemoval()
- Fix a bug in AbstractEmbeddedChannel.doRegister where it makes pending tasks immediately, where the pending tasks actually triggers inbound events
- Remove unnecessary suppression of inboundBufferUpdated() event in DefaultChannelPipeline, which potentially hides an event ordering bug. Unfortunately, I don't remember why I added it in cca35454d214611792067c89b78f7477aae3a323.
This change also introduce a few other changes which was needed:
* ChannelHandler.beforeAdd(...) and ChannelHandler.beforeRemove(...) were removed
* ChannelHandler.afterAdd(...) -> handlerAdded(...)
* ChannelHandler.afterRemoved(...) -> handlerRemoved(...)
* SslHandler.handshake() -> SslHandler.hanshakeFuture() as the handshake is triggered automatically after
the Channel becomes active
- Rename inbound/outboundBufferFreed to inbound/OutboundShutdown which makes more sense
- Move DefaultChannelHandlerContext.isInbound/OutboundBufferFreed() to DefaultChannelPipeline
- Fix a problem where invokeFreeInbound/OutboundBuffer() sets inbound/outboundShutdown too early (this was the direct cause of #1064)
- Remove the volatile modifier - DCHC.prev/next are volatile and that's just enough
- Rename ChannelHandlerAdapter to ChannelDuplexHandler
- Add ChannelHandlerAdapter that implements only ChannelHandler
- Rename CombinedChannelHandler to CombinedChannelDuplexHandler and
improve runtime validation
- Remove ChannelInbound/OutboundHandlerAdapter which are not useful
- Make ChannelOutboundByteHandlerAdapter similar to
ChannelInboundByteHandlerAdapter
- Make the tail and head handler of DefaultChannelPipeline accept both
bytes and messages. ChannelHandlerContext.hasNext*() were removed
because they always return true now.
- Removed various unnecessary null checks.
- Correct method/field names:
inboundBufferSuspended -> channelReadSuspended
This changes the behavior of the ChannelPipeline.remove(..) and ChannelPipeline.replace(..) methods in that way
that after invocation it is not possible anymore to access any data in the inbound or outbound buffer. This is
because it empty it now to prevent side-effects. If a user want to preserve the content and forward it to the
next handler in the pipeline it is adviced to use one of the new methods which where introduced.
- ChannelPipeline.removeAndForward(..)
- ChannelPipeline.replaceAndForward(..)
