Java agent release notesRSS

• Real-time profiling for Java using JFR metrics

Due to overhead caused in some applications Real-time profiling for Java using JFR metrics is now disabled by default.

It can be enabled using the agent settings (newrelic.yml).

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Known issues

Some customers saw increased overhead when Real-time profiling is enabled.

See notice below on how to disable it.

New features and improvements:

• Java instrumentation by XML new properties:

  • traceLambda - to trace lambdas inside a method
  • traceByReturnType - to trace all methods in a class that return a given type

  These are compatible with Java and Scala. For more information, see Java instrumentation by XML.

• Scala APIs

  New artifacts allow Scala code to be instrumented using a fluent Scala API instead of the Java annotations. There are specific artifacts for versions 2.10, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13 of Scala. Scala 3.0 users can use the 2.13 artifact.

  For more information, see Scala instrumentation.

• Real-time profiling for Java using JFR metrics

  This feature is now enabled by default.

  Important

  This feature will cause an increase in the consumption of data. The amount depends on the application. This feature can be disabled by adding the following to the agent yaml config nested under the common section:

  jfr:
      enabled: false

  Copy

  For more information, see JFR core README.

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Fixes

• Fixes an issue where the agent would break OkHttp versions 3.X and lower. (#324)

New features and improvements:

• Real-time profiling for Java using JFR metrics is now fully integrated into the Java agent. See the JFR core README for additional details.

This feature requires a supported version of Java 8 (specifically version 8u262 or higher) or Java 11 or higher and is currently disabled by default. To enable it set the following in your yaml (indented 2 spaces under the common section).

jfr:
  enabled: true

Notice: If you were previously using the jfr-daemon jar as an agent extension or standalone process you should remove that option to avoid potential conflicts with the JFR service that is now built into the agent.

• Not compatible with Java 7. In order to continue to innovate and efficiently provide new capabilities to our customers who run on the JVM, this and future agent versions aren't compatible with Java 7. If you're running Java 7, you may continue to use Java agent 6.5.0 or lower. For details, see this topic on the Explorers Hub.
• Adds support for akka http with Scala 2.13. #271
• Class annotation to trace lambda methods. #274
• Class annotation to trace methods by return type. #275

Fixes:

• Fixes an issue that could cause multiple versions of akka-http-core instrumentation to apply at the same time. #208
• The agent will now log dropped events at FINE instead of WARN to decrease verbosity. #296
• Fixes Javadoc comments that incorrectly stated that, when calling the noticeError API multiple times, the first error would be reported when in fact it's the last error that is reported. #313

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Known Issues

• OkHttp

This release contains a bug that breaks OkHttp versions 3.X and below. All affected users should upgrade to 7.0.1.

New features and improvements:

• The agent no longer bundles SSL certificates with it and the use_private_ssl option that configured the agent to use the previously bundled certificates has been removed. By default, the agent will use the SSL truststore provided by the JVM unless it is explicitly configured to use a different truststore with the ca_bundle_path option. See Configuring your SSL certificates for more details.

Fixes:

• Fixes an issue that could cause incorrect transaction naming when using JAX-RS sub-resources.
• Reactor Netty instrumentation improvements and fixes.

Deprecation notice

• Java 7 compatibility deprecation

In order to continue to innovate and efficiently provide new capabilities to our customers who run on the JVM, Java 7 support has been deprecated and this will be the last version of the agent compatible with it.

If you are running Java 7, you may continue to use Java agent 6.5.0 or lower.

For more information, see the Explorers Hub post.

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Fixes

Fixes an issue that could cause some instrumentation modules (e.g. jax-rs-1.0) to have a WeaveViolation and not apply properly.

Fixes

Fixes an issue in 6.4.0 where spans would not get sent to Infinite Tracing.

Note:

• There is an issue with this agent release that could lead to spans not being sent to Infinite Tracing. Please use 6.4.1 instead.

New Features and Improvements:

• Spring Webflux/Netty Reactor instrumentation improvements for enhanced tracing across asynchronous thread hops.
• The agent will now utilize a backoff sequence on connection retries to Infinite Tracing.
• New distributed tracing APIs have been added to better support general use cases for propagating distributed tracing headers. In particular the new APIs provide enhanced support for W3C Trace Context but are flexible enough to support other header protocols that may be supported by the agent in the future. Previous distributed tracing APIs have been deprecated and are subject to removal in a future agent release. See documentation here.
  • Transaction.insertDistributedTraceHeaders(Headers) is used to create and insert distributed tracing headers (both newrelic and W3C Trace Context) into a Headers data structure.
  • Transaction.acceptDistributedTraceHeaders(TransportType, Headers) is used to accept the distributed tracing headers sent from the calling service and link these services together in a distributed trace.

Fixes:

• Updated the Java agent’s snakeyaml dependency to 1.27.
• In some environments the jar collector service could lead to high CPU utilization at application startup. The agent now provides a configurable rate limiter, with a reasonable default, for processing jars detected in the application’s environment. See documentation here.

Support statement:

• New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly to ensure that you're getting the latest features and performance benefits. Additionally, older releases will no longer be supported when they reach end-of-life.

Improvements

• Spring Webflux
  • The Java agent now supports Spring Webflux versions 5.3+
  • Added reactor-netty.errors.enabled configuration to allow disabling error reporting in Subscriber::onError.
• Scala 2.13
  • The Java agent now provides support for Scala 2.13 and frameworks compiled with 2.13 Akka-http, Play

Fixes

• The netty-4.0.8 instrumentation would sometimes not start a Transaction on channelRead, potentially affecting instrumentation dependent on it including: Spring, Akka and Play
• Updated the Java agent’s Apache HttpClient dependency to 5.13
• Spring Webclient could report the wrong URL when multiple HTTP calls to several URLs occurred in parallel