Summary

  • Module prefixes can now be stored in daml.yaml. This means that you can use multiple versions of libraries in the same project by specifying them in daml.yaml instead of with the --package command line flag.
  • A new flag, --max-lf-value-translation-cache-entries, allows you to set a number of events for which DAML-LF values will be cached. This can help reduce latency when serving transactions.

What's New

Module Prefixes

Background

When upgrading a package using a DAML upgrade workflow, one has to import both the old and new version of the package as dependencies. If both the package and module names are the same, this used to require setting compiler flags. The new Module Prefixes feature gives an easier means of disambiguating the packages and modules.

Specific Changes

The compiler picks up a new block module-prefixes specified in daml.yaml. module-prefixes takes entries of the form  package: Prefix, and modules from the package are then accessible using that prefix. For example, the below makes module X from foo-1.0.0 available as Foo1.X, and X from foo-2.0.0 as Foo2.X.

module-prefixes:
  foo-1.0.0: Foo1
  foo-2.0.0: Foo2

Refer to the documentation for detailed information.

Impact and Migration

This is a purely additive feature, so no migration is necessary. If your project uses the old --package compiler flag to disambiguate packages, you can switch to this simpler method.

Minor Improvements

  • The Sandbox's --max-lf-value-translation-cache-entries option allows you to set a number of events for which DAML-LF values are cached. This can reduce latency in serving transactions.
  • daml damlc inspect-dar now has a --json flag to produce machine-readable output. See the documentation for more information.
  • The Scala bindings have gained a method, LedgerClient#close, which will shut down the channel and await termination. This is optional; the channel will still be shut down on JVM exit if this method is not called.
  • Record dot syntax like rec.field1.field2 is now handled in expressions entered into the REPL.
  • daml trigger, daml script and daml repl now all support the --max-inbound-message-size command line flag, which configures the maximum size of transactions that can be handled.
  • The createAndExerciseCmd command has been added to DAML Triggers.

Security and Bugfixes

  • Dependencies have been upgraded to newer versions to avoid exposure to reported security vulnerabilities.
    • Upgrade jackson version to 2.11.0 from 2.9.9.3
    • Upgrade io.grpc:grpc-xxxxx and io.netty:netty-xxx version to latest
    • Upgrade protobuf and protobuf-java to 3.11.0
  • A Sandbox Classic migration issue when used with postgres has been fixed. See #6017
  • A bug where large multi-command transactions would cause a stack overflow in DAML Script was fixed.
  • The Standard Library's DA.Text.splitOn function will now correctly handle the case where the separator appears at the end but should not be matched, as in splitOn "aa" "aaa" == ["", "a"]. See #5786 for more details.
  • The DAML linter, dlint, has been improved by removing some Haskell-based rules not currently applicable to DAML and by changing some function references.

Ledger Integration Kit

  • The Ledger API Server emits new metrics for the LF Value Cache. If the --max-state-value-cache-size is greater than zero, the following additional metrics will be recorded under the daml.kvutils.submission.validator.state_value_cache namespace: 
    • hits
    • misses
    • load_successes
    • load_failures
    • load_total_time
    • evictions
    • evicted_weight
  • Added new Ledger API Server metrics for daml.index.db.*.translation to measure the time spent translating to and from the serialized DAML-LF values when fetched from the participant index.
  • Added new Ledger API Server metrics for daml.index.db.*.deserialization to measure the duration of the translation of the serialized DAML-LF values when fetched from the participant index.
  • The Ledger API Test Tool has gained the TransactionSize performance benchmark test.