Logstash 1.5.0 RC3 released

We have a new release candidate (RC3) for 1.5.0. After RC2 was released last month, we got a lot of input from the community. Among them were reports of performance regressions, which has been the central focus of this release. We also fixed important bugs so we decided to provide an update before making 1.5.0 generally available. Check out the changelog for details.

The highlights:

Performance regression

Users reported a drop in throughput performance when compared to 1.4.2. This was especially evident in configurations using conditionals in filters and outputs. We tweaked the code generation in these pipeline stages and made it more efficient. #2870 has the details including numbers.

Shutdown issues

Fixed a bug which manifested in Logstash not shutting down gracefully. The root cause for this issue was pipeline not sending the right shutdown signal to the plugins. (#2796,  #2871)

Java Options

Added the ability to append extra JVM options while running Logstash. Setting the LS_JAVA_OPTS environment variable will add to the default options. This enhancement also provides the ability to completely replace the JVM options. For example, users may change the GC algorithm if they wish and use their own instead of the out of the box settings. (#2942)

Grok Filter regression

Fixed an issue where coercion of int and floats in Grok pattern was causing empty fields to be created (in some cases). This was a side effect of the performance fixes made previously for the Grok library. (#2897)

File Input

Users mentioned permission issues (with respect to sinceDB) during Logstash shutdown. Fixed this and other corruption issues while writing file position to sinceDB in the Filewatch gem. (#2935, #2822, #2964)

As always, thanks to all our users for the valuable feedback and contributions. We are in the home stretch for releasing 1.5.0. Please download RC3, try it out, and send your feedback by opening an issue on GitHub or tweet to us.