Prepare release notes for 1.2.3

content/blog/2024-02-28-arrow-1-2-3.md

@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
+---
+title: Arrow 1.2.3 release
+category: articles
+tags: [core, articles]
+---
+
+# Arrow 1.2.3 release
+
+We are happy to announce the availability of version 1.2.3 of the Arrow collection of libraries.
+According to our plan, this is the last non-bugfix release of the 1.x series.
+From now on, our `main` branch targets Arrow 2.0, which should be the next major release.
+
+We are incredibly thankful to the many people that have contributed to this release,
+bringing new ideas and quite some code.
+
+## New features
+
+A version number like 1.2.3 sounds like a small bugfix release, but this is far from truth in
+this case: this release is full of new modules to help you be productive when writing Kotlin.
+
+### Improved focus on Compose
+
+Arrow provides building blocks relevant to many projects using Kotlin.
+A large part of our community is doing frontend work, and during the latest months,
+the team has been trying to understand their needs, in order to make Arrow
+a relevant tool in that space.
+
+From that journey, we have put together a new documentation page highlighting
+different ways in which Arrow may be useful in your Compose application.
+There is also a new [`arrow-optics-compose` module](/learn/immutable-data/lens/#integration-with-compose)
+that includes utilities to work with immutable data inside a `MutableState`
+or `MutableStateFlow`.
+
+We are eager to hear more use cases or needs where Arrow may help the lives
+of Kotlin developers. Feel free to drop by the `#arrow` channel in the Kotlin Slack,
+or open an issue or discussion in our [repository](https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow).
+
+### Non-`suspend` resource management
+
+[Resource safety](/learn/coroutines/resource-safety/) in Arrow
+has been traditionally tied to the use of coroutines and `suspend` functions.
+This is the right choice for Kotlin-first libraries, like Ktor or Koin, but many
+libraries still come from a Java background where no such feature exists.
+Beginning with this version, we provide two "variations" of resource management:
+
+- `Resource`, from the `arrow-fx-coroutines` module, is based on `suspend`
+  and ensures the desired behavior alongside coroutines (including cancellation).
+- `AutoClose`, from the new `arrow-autoclose` module, provides almost the
+  same API as `Resource`, but without the `suspend` requirement.
+
+### Forward compatible `Eval`
+
+One of our goals is to make the transition to 2.0 as smooth as possible.
+You can [already migrate](/learn/quickstart/migration/)
+to the new APIs by using Arrow 1.2.3, and then ensuring that you get no deprecation warnings.
+
+During this process, we were [made aware](https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow/issues/3039) that
+there was no clear story for the migration of `Eval`. On the other hand, the use cases are very narrow.
+The decision was to create a new [`arrow-eval` module](/learn/collections-functions/eval/),
+present since this release, and mark the one from `arrow-core` point the new module,
+instead of entirely removing this functionality from Arrow.
+
+### Collectors
+
+The new [`arrow-collectors` module](/learn/collections-functions/collectors/)
+allows composing operations over sequences of values
+(lists, flows, sequences) while ensuring that the sequence is traversed only once.
+This property is especially relevant when building the sequence is expensive, or simply
+cannot be reproduced, like a stream of data from a database or a flow of actions.
+
+## Improved features
+
+Several features in the library have been improved, to ensure that Arrow covers a variety
+of use cases.
+
+### Lenses for sealed classes
+
+This was once of the [older feature requests](https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow/issues/2829)
+still in our issue tracker, which is now closed thanks to a wonderful
+[contribution](https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow/pull/3359)!
+
+From now on, the Optics KSP plug-in can generate
+[lenses for sealed hierarchies](/learn/immutable-data/lens/#sealed-class-hierarchies),
+given that the field lives in the common parent. For example, the following code
+
+```kotlin
+@optics sealed interface User {
+  val name: String
+
+  data class Person(override val name: String, val age: Int): User
+  data class Company(override val name: String, val vat: VATNumber): User
+}
+```
+
+generates from this version on both prisms for each choice, and a lens for `name`.
+
+### Higher-arity functions
+
+We have traditionally been reluctant to add variations of `zip` with more than
+10 parameters, because we felt that the narrow use cases did not balance out
+the increase in binary size. Since this release Arrow provides those functions
+in a new `arrow-core-high-arity` module.
+
+### More accumulating functions for `Raise`
+
+[Typed errors](/learn/typed-errors/working-with-typed-errors/)
+provide two essential ways to [accumulate errors](/learn/typed-errors/working-with-typed-errors/#accumulating-errors): `zipOrAccumulate` and `mapOrAccumulate`. Those correspond
+to accumulating over a fixed number of computations of different types, or
+accumulating over an unknown quantity of computations with the same type.
+
+The `mapOrAccumulate` function _always_ returns a new list. In some cases, you
+don't really care about this result, just about the iteration behavior.
+This is similar to the different between `map` and `forEach` in the standard
+library. From there Arrow takes the name of the new function: `forEachAccumulating`.
+
+One potential use case is performing validation over elements of a list,
+but keeping the values intact.
+
+```kotlin
+people.forEachAccumulating { person ->
+  ensure(person.age >= 0) { InvalidAge(person.name) }
+}
+```
+
+### Better memoization
+
+[`MemoizedDeepRecursiveFunction`](/learn/collections-functions/recursive/#memoized-recursive-functions)
+is a powerful tool to express recursive algorithms without worries over stack overflow or recomputation.
+However, there was a lack of control over how memoized values were stored or evicted, which made the
+type less useful than intended.
+
+From this release on, there are new overloads to support custom memoization policies.
+Furthermore, the new [`arrow-cache4k` module](/learn/collections-functions/recursive/#memoization-takes-memory)
+provides integration with the excellent
+[cache4k](https://github.com/ReactiveCircus/cache4k) library.
+
+## More integrations
+
+Although not part of this release, we would like to highlight that
+[Akkurate](https://akkurate.dev), which provides a wonderful DSL for validation over data,
+has released an [integration module for Arrow](https://akkurate.dev/docs/arrow-integration.html).
+This adds to the [rest of integrations](/learn/integrations/)
+and shows the collaborative spirit of the Kotlin community.