RethinkDB Files

RethinkDB 2.4 introduces write hooks and bitwise operations besides bug fixes.

Read the blog post for more details.

Compatibility

Data files from RethinkDB version 1.16 onward will be automatically migrated. As with any major release, back up your data files before performing the upgrade. Please read the RethinkDB 2.4.0 release notes if you're upgrading from version 2.3.x or earlier.

RethinkDB 2.4.0 servers cannot be mixed with servers running RethinkDB 2.3.x or earlier in the same cluster.

Official Drivers

Except for JavaScript, the official drivers are now generally maintained as separate projects. But note that there is some coupling of RethinkDB console commands, like rethinkdb dump, with the Python driver. RethinkDB 2.4 contains some old copies of the drivers to keep ./test/run working with minimal effort. The JavaScript driver is still used in the Web UI. However, the web assets are now pre-generated, at src/gen/web_assets.cc, making the presence of the driver in the repository not strictly necessary.

Here are links to the official drivers:

• Python: https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb-python/
• Ruby: https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb-ruby/
• Java: https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb-java/
• JavaScript: https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/tree/next/drivers/javascript

API-breaking changes

• Write hooks add a new field to the table configuration.
• A bugfix changes the match command's behavior on empty regexes. It had previously been behaving incorrectly.

Substantive Changes

(Issue numbers point into the https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb bugtracker.)

• ReQL
• Added the set_write_hook and get_write_hook commands, which attach to tables a function that can modify the behavior of any write. (#5813)
• Added bitwise operators for number types: bit_and, bit_not, bit_or, bit_sal, bit_sar and bit_xor. (#6534)
• Permitted the hyphen character (-) to be used in table names. (#5537)
• Users may be granted permissions on system tables. (#5692)
• Make iso8601 command round, not truncate. (#6909)
• Fix timestamp millisecond down-truncation bug. (#6272)
• Server
• Fixed crash with limit change feed inserted guarantee failure. (#6710)
• Avoid using DNS resolution when finding network interface addresses. (#6588)
• Removed update checker. (#6791)
• Added experimental support for arm64/aarch64. (#6438)
• Added experimental support for Power8/LE platform. (#6317)
• Fixed race condition in the query cache. (#6564)
• Avoid quadratic growth in segmented vector. (#6385)
• Big-Endian fixes and s390x support. (#6242)
• Web UI
• Implemented a new table viewer widget for browsing the contents of tables. (#6767)
• Improved table page performance in case with many databases. (#6790)
• Compilation
• The web assets are now pre-generated, so that macOS users can build them. (#6770)
• Debian package building is now parallelized. (#6780)
• Fixed extproc spawner bug. (#5572)
• Allowed building against libressl. (#6671)
• JavaScript Driver
• Avoided mutating object passed to r.connect. (#6575)
• Python Driver
• See more details at https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb-python/releases
• Other Drivers
• Changes omitted, as they're in separate repositories.