Introduction

jclouds 1.6 represents 7 months of refactoring to essentially “reset” the project 4 years after its founding. Most changes didn’t affect user interfaces. The bulk of work included removing dependencies, reducing or removing threading, and refactoring to make jclouds do less magic and be easier to code and troubleshoot.

With this foundation in place, our move to the Apache Incubator will be easier on new developers, and allow us to move faster on feature requests moving forward.

Notable Updates in jclouds Version 1.6

Core Updates

• Api classes now extend closeable, allowing you to skip using “contexts”. Ex. NovaApi api = contextBuilder.buildApi(NovaApi.class);
• If you do not use the deprecated Async interfaces, jclouds will spawn far less, and in many cases no threads. Future releases will focus on “bring your own executor” design, allowing you to have complete control or forbid threading completely.
• Library dependencies significantly reduced, making it possible to assemble <5MB multi-cloud apps or libraries built with jclouds.

New Apis and Providers

• api:openstack-cinder
• api:rackspace-clouddns
• api:rackspace-cloudloadbalancers
• api:route53
• api:sts
• provider:aws-route53
• provider:aws-sts
• provider:dynect
• provider:rackspace-cloudblockstorage-uk
• provider:rackspace-cloudblockstorage-us
• provider:rackspace-clouddns-uk
• provider:rackspace-clouddns-us
• provider:rackspace-cloudloadbalancers-uk
• provider:rackspace-cloudloadbalancers-us
• provider:ultradns-ws

Removed Apis and Providers

• api:cloudloadbalancers - please use the rackspace-cloudloadbalancers api
• api:deltacloud - please use the ec2 api
• api:eucalyptus - please use the ec2 api
• api:nova - pre-diablo openstack no longer supported
• api:walrus - please use the s3 api
• provider:cloudloadbalancers-uk - please use the rackspace-cloudloadbalancers-uk api
• provider:cloudloadbalancers-us - please use the rackspace-cloudloadbalancers-us api
• provider:eucalyptus-partnercloud-ec2 - please use the ec2 api
• provider:eucalyptus-partnercloud-s3 - please use the s3 api
• provider:rimuhosting - no longer supported
• provider:slicehost - no longer supported
• provider:stratogen-vcloud-mycloud - please use the vcloud api
• provider:synaptic-storage - please use the atmos api
• provider:trystack-nova - please use the openstack-nova api

Deprecated Non-backwards Compatible Changes

• All “Async” interfaces are deprecated and will be removed in the next version of jclouds. Please only use the normal apis, such as NovaApi.
• Accordingly, please discontinue use of RestContext. This is replaced with ApiContext, which doesn’t have an async type. Note that you can use ContextBuilder.buildApi(YourApi.class) instead of using contexts, as api interfaces are now closeable.
• Please discontinue use of Context.utils() as many features there were only present to support the Async interfaces of jclouds. Code in jclouds will be easier to maintain when we needn’t support utilities that are also present in tools such as guava and bouncycastle.

Where to next?

jclouds will soon enter the Apache Incubator, please watch out for announcements as futher progress and releases of jclouds will occur from there.

Follow us on Twitter for updates.

Tracking

To keep up with the latest on jclouds Version 1.6, please see issue 1564

Credits

jclouds would like to thank everyone who contributed time and effort in order to make the release of jclouds Version 1.6 happen. Check out who has been busy here.

Test Results

Please see the test results for jclouds Version 1.6.