v2.4.4 Release Notes - June 17, 2022

Improvements

peer - Add a "gateway.responsechecker" logger for logging endorsement response differences

To assist with troubleshooting when endorsement responses are different across multiple peers, the new "gateway.responsechecker" logger will log warnings indicating which parts of endorsement responses are different.

peer - Enable gateway service to invoke system chaincodes

The gateway service can now invoke system chaincodes such as QSCC when requested by a client application.

peer - Enable resume of chaincode event listening

Enables the client to (optionally) specify an AfterTransactionId property in addition to a start block number when requesting chaincode events, which causes chaincode events up to that transaction ID (inclusive) to be ignored and not returned to the client. This supports resume of chaincode event listening on client reconnect without duplicating or missing any events.

Dependencies

Fabric v2.4.4 has been tested with the following dependencies:

• Go 1.18.2
• CouchDB v3.2.2

Fabric docker images on dockerhub utilize Alpine 3.16.

Deprecations (existing)

Ordering service system channel is deprecated

v2.3 introduced the ability to manage an ordering service without a system channel. Managing an ordering service without a system channel has privacy, scalability, and operational benefits. The use of a system channel is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. For information about removal of the system channel, see the Create a channel without system channel documentation.

FAB-15754: The 'Solo' consensus type is deprecated.

The 'Solo' consensus type has always been marked non-production and should be in use only in test environments, however for compatibility it is still available, but may be removed entirely in a future release.

FAB-16408: The 'Kafka' consensus type is deprecated.

The 'Raft' consensus type was introduced in v1.4.1 and has become the preferred production consensus type. There is a documented and tested migration path from Kafka to Raft, and existing users should migrate to the newer Raft consensus type. For compatibility with existing deployments, Kafka is still supported, but may be removed entirely in a future release. Additionally, the fabric-kafka and fabric-zookeeper docker images are no longer updated, maintained, or published.

Fabric CouchDB image is deprecated

v2.2.0 added support for CouchDB 3.1.0 as the recommended and tested version of CouchDB. If prior versions are utilized, a Warning will appear in peer log. Note that CouchDB 3.1.0 requires that an admin username and password be set, while this was optional in CouchDB v2.x. See the Fabric CouchDB documentation for configuration details. Also note that CouchDB 3.1.0 default max_document_size is reduced to 8MB. Set a higher value if needed in your environment. Finally, the fabric-couchdb docker image will not be updated to v3.1.0 and will no longer be updated, maintained, or published. Users can utilize the official CouchDB docker image maintained by the Apache CouchDB project instead.

FAB-7559: Support for specifying orderer endpoints at the global level in channel configuration is deprecated.

Utilize the new 'OrdererEndpoints' stanza within the channel configuration of an organization instead. Configuring orderer endpoints at the organization level accommodates scenarios where orderers are run by different organizations. Using this configuration ensures that only the TLS CA certificates of that organization are used for orderer communications, in contrast to the global channel level endpoints which would cause an aggregation of all orderer TLS CA certificates across all orderer organizations to be used for orderer communications.

FAB-17428: Support for configtxgen flag --outputAnchorPeersUpdate is deprecated.

The --outputAnchorPeersUpdate mechanism for updating anchor peers has always had limitations (for instance, it only works the first time anchor peers are updated). Instead, anchor peer updates should be performed through the normal config update flow.

FAB-15406: The fabric-tools docker image is deprecated

The fabric-tools docker image will not be published in future Fabric releases. Instead of using the fabric-tools docker image, users should utilize the published Fabric binaries. The Fabric binaries can be used to make client calls to Fabric runtime components, regardless of where the Fabric components are running.

FAB-15317: Block dissemination via gossip is deprecated

Block dissemination via gossip is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Fabric peers can be configured to receive blocks directly from an ordering service node and not gossip blocks by using the following configuration:

peer.gossip.orgLeader: true
peer.gossip.useLeaderElection: false
peer.gossip.state.enabled: false
peer.deliveryclient.blockGossipEnabled: false

FAB-15061: Legacy chaincode lifecycle is deprecated

The legacy chaincode lifecycle from v1.x is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. To prepare for the eventual removal, utilize the v2.x chaincode lifecycle instead, by enabling V2_0 application capability on all channels, and redeploying all chaincodes using the v2.x lifecycle. The new chaincode lifecycle provides a more flexible and robust governance model for chaincodes. For more details see the documentation for enabling the new lifecycle.

Changes:

• 1473ecae6451d82a068aa943f8df8cf1a7ce4864 Release commit for v2.4.4 (#3487)
• 6f4282b8149997129933bc2b967cd47fe758d270 Fix gossip unit test flake (#3215)
• a914ec3d6e4be1a8991439e3e782f79ba7f904b5 Bump Alpine to 3.16 (release-2.4) (#3472)
• 8ffd334ec5ec37228c26eae4881b317ef71d6a13 Locate correct block number for transaction ID in ChaincodeEvents (#3289)
• f64eea25dc877cd13d87a81fb3ee6932c85db3fa Refactor of ChaincodeEvents service implementation to support resume (#3283)
• 02d63c3bc1050758e6a50f0e8b7d57a3ff8e7466 Add -buildvcs=false for building binaries
• 60638b5432f2c49a19de1e0e0cd25ab9bbc8c856 Improved gateway error for transient data failure [ #3328 ]
• a6947faae11a9fffb9bc8b2ffe5666dbd01b200f Use any peer to evaluate system chaincode transactions (#3447)
• 135c268e984bec95940c0aa0629fc5c2c0e30a12 Improve response mismatch logging
• 29fea4f17c0c160656933690532d5faaa4335a8f Log proposal response differences (backport #3420)