On behalf of the team and everyone who contributed, we are pleased to announce that Spring for Apache Kafka 4.0.0-RC1 has been released. We extend our gratitude to all contributors who made this release possible.

This is our first and final release candidate before the 4.0.0 GA release. We encourage the community to test this release candidate and provide feedback on any issues or concerns before we proceed with the general availability release.

What's New in 4.0.0-RC1

Share Consumer Enhancements: Expanded share consumer capabilities with comprehensive acknowledgment support, concurrency configuration, and factory-level container properties. The share consumer implementation now includes proper poison message protection and delivery count tracking. Speaking of Share Consumers, we recently published a dedicated blog covering in detail the support for this feature in Spring for Apache Kafka.

Improved Interceptor Configuration: Added the ability to configure interceptors directly on listener container factories, providing more flexibility in message processing pipelines.

Dependency Updates: Upgraded to Jackson 3.0.0 (GA), JUnit 6.0.0, and other dependency refinements to ensure compatibility with the latest ecosystem components.

Several bug fixes are also included in this release, addressing transaction handling edge cases and retry topic configuration issues.

You can find complete details in the reference documentation.

Release Notes

4.0.0-RC1 release notes: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-RC1

Spring Boot Integration

The 4.0.0-RC1 release will be integrated into the upcoming Spring Boot 4.0.0-RC1 release.

Community Feedback

As we approach the GA release, we value your input. Please test this release candidate in your applications and report any issues or feedback through our GitHub repository.

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