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@ChrisMavrommatis ChrisMavrommatis released this 13 Aug 19:59
· 125 commits to main since this release

Binacle.Net v3.0.0 is a major update from v2.1.1.

Warning

v3.0.0 introduces breaking changes. Existing integrations must be reviewed and updated. V2 endpoints are removed, ViPaq strings from earlier versions no longer decode, and health check IP restrictions are matched differently.


🔎 Overview

  • V2 endpoints were removed.
  • V4 endpoints were introduced as experimental.
  • V3 endpoints remain stable and unchanged, and are the recommended version.
  • ViPaq was rebuilt with a smaller, simpler format. Strings from earlier versions no longer decode.
  • ViPaq left experimental status — the format is stable as of this release.
  • Algorithms were unified — fitting and packing now share one implementation.
  • Packing Logs configuration was flattened, with breaking changes for existing integrations.
  • Forwarded headers are now supported, so the real caller is resolved when running behind a proxy or CDN.
  • Health check IP restrictions are matched differently, with breaking changes for existing allow-lists.
  • The image creates /app/data and gives it to the app user, so a volume mounted there is writable.
  • The image is signed, and carries an SBOM and build provenance, so you can verify what you pull.
  • The image is about a third smaller — it uses the .NET runtime from its base image instead of bundling a second copy.
  • The project was restructured, separating the API, library, and ViPaq into their own roots.
  • Versioned documentation now covers every minor line, so older images keep their docs.

⚙️ Core Changes

  • Removal of all V2 endpoints.

  • Added 16 experimental V4 endpoints, covering everything V3 does.

  • V4 splits a request into three shapes. One bin, one answerfit/bin, pack/bin, and their {preset}/{bin} variants.

  • Many bins, one answerpack/smallest-bin, pack/smallest-bin/{preset}, fit/smallest-bin, and fit/smallest-bin/{preset} return the smallest bin that works; pack/best-bin and pack/best-bin/{preset} return the bin the items fill the most.

  • Many bins, every answerfit/compare-bins, pack/compare-bins, and their {preset} variants return one result per bin, in the order the bins were sent.

  • Presets can be listed with presets or fetched one at a time with presets/{preset}.

  • V4 is experimental and can change at any time. V3 remains stable and is the recommended version.

  • V3 endpoints are unchanged and remain stable, apart from the ViPaq payload.

  • ViPaq is no longer experimental. The format is settled as of this release, where it carried an experimental warning through v2.1.1. A future format change takes a new Version code rather than altering the current one, so an older decoder rejects a newer string outright instead of misreading it.

  • Added forwarded headers support, configured in Config_Files/ForwardedHeaders.json. Disabled by default.

  • When enabled, the caller's address and scheme are resolved from X-Forwarded-For and X-Forwarded-Proto before anything reads them, so rate limiting and health check IP restrictions see the real caller rather than the proxy.

  • Trust is explicit — a proxy on loopback or a private network is trusted by default, anything else must be named. The app refuses to start if nothing is trusted, because that would make every caller's header believable.

  • A different header can be read instead, for CDNs that send one — CF-Connecting-IP, X-Real-IP, X-Azure-ClientIP.

  • ASPNETCORE_FORWARDEDHEADERS_ENABLED is ignored. It switches the underlying middleware on with no proxy verification, which lets any caller choose their own address.

  • TrustedProxies entries are read exactly as written, the same rule as health check RestrictedIPs. 010.10.10.10 used to be read as octal and trust 8.10.10.10, and 172.17.1 used to mean 172.17.0.1; both now fail startup validation rather than trusting a host you did not name.

  • Added a /_debug endpoint, off by default, enabled with DEBUG_ENDPOINT=True. It echoes the caller's own request — connection address and headers — for working out what a proxy is sending.

  • A startup warning when a forwarding header arrives and does not take effect, either because the feature is off or because the trust list does not name your proxy. Logged once. Without it both states are silent and the app quietly reads the proxy as the caller.

  • The image now creates /app/data and gives it to the app user. A volume mounted there is writable with no extra setup. Previously docker created the mount point as root, the app does not run as root, and packing logs and the SQLite database could not be written to a fresh named volume.

  • The image ships libgssapi-krb5-2, so Npgsql stops printing Cannot load library libgssapi_krb5.so.2 at every start. Nothing was broken — the app authenticates with a password, not Kerberos — but the message read like a fatal error.

  • The image carries OCI labels — title, description, source, url, documentation, vendor, licence and base image — plus version, revision and created per build.

  • The image is signed, and ships an SBOM and build provenance. Signing is keyless, so there is no public key to fetch — the signature is checked against the workflow that produced it — and it covers the digest, so it holds for every tag pointing at that image:

    cosign verify binacle/binacle-net:3.0.0 \
      --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/ChrisMavrommatis/Binacle\.Net/\.github/workflows/release-docker-image\.yml@' \
      --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com

    The SPDX SBOM and SLSA provenance travel inside the image index; docker buildx imagetools inspect binacle/binacle-net:3.0.0 lists them.

  • The image is smaller — around 103 MB, where the same image built the old way was 150 MB. The app is published framework-dependent, so it runs on the .NET runtime already in the aspnet:10.0 base image instead of carrying a second copy of it. Nothing about running the container changes.

  • Existing environment variables are unchanged.

🧪 Diagnostics Module

  • Packing Logs configuration was flattenedPath, FileName, DateFormat, and ChannelLimit now sit directly under PackingLogs.
  • Removed the fitting configuration block, now that fitting and packing share one log.
  • Implementations depending on the old nested shape must be updated, or startup validation will fail.
  • The default log path changed from data/pack-logs/packing/ to data/pack-logs/.
  • Packing log entries now include a Timestamp field.
  • Added RetentionDays to PackingLogs. When set, packing log files older than that many days are deleted once a day, and each deletion is logged. Off by default (null) — files are kept until you remove them yourself. Only files matching the configured FileName pattern in the configured Path are touched, and only at the top level.
  • Health check RestrictedIPs now uses CIDR notation correctly. The value after / was previously read as an address mask, so 192.168.1.0/24 covered nearly the whole IPv4 range instead of 256 addresses. Existing CIDR entries are now much narrower than they were.
  • Health check RestrictedIPs now matches IPv4 callers in containers. Addresses arriving in IPv4-mapped IPv6 form are unmapped before comparison, which they previously were not — no IPv4 entry could match.
  • Removed the start-end range form from RestrictedIPs. Entries such as 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.255 now fail startup validation. Use CIDR instead.
  • RestrictedIPs entries are now read exactly as written. An IPv4 address must be four plain decimal parts with no leading zeros, and an IPv6 address must be in its short, lowercase form. 010.10.10.10 used to be read as octal and admit 8.10.10.10; 10.1 used to mean 10.0.0.1; 167772161 meant the same. All of these now fail startup validation instead of quietly admitting a host you did not name. 192.168.1.1/24 still means the whole 192.168.1.0/24 — that is what CIDR notation means — but the startup log now says so.

🔌 Service Module

  • The Service Module is exempt from these notes — since v2.0.0 it is developed for the hosted service, so a change to it is not documented here and does not force a major version. If you self-host with SERVICE_MODULE enabled, read the full changelog before upgrading. One fix is worth calling out on its own:
  • The auth token rate limit no longer partitions on a caller-supplied header. It partitions on the connection's remote address, which forwarded headers resolve to the real caller wherever a proxy is trusted. Before this, varying the header reset your own login throttle.

🎨 UI Module

  • The Protocol Decoder reads the new ViPaq format only. Strings from earlier versions are rejected.

📈 Algorithms

  • Fitting and packing now share one algorithm. Fitting stops early on the first item that does not fit.
  • Packing results are unchanged — the shared algorithm is the previous packing implementation.
  • The separate fitting algorithm family was retired.

🏗️ Internal Work

  • Restructured the repository — the API, library, ViPaq, and shared test data now live in their own roots.
  • Extracted Binacle.Geometry into its own library.
  • Reworked the packing log pipeline, moving the generic parts into the Kernel.
  • Added benchmark suites for algorithms, bin processing, result selection, and ViPaq.
  • Added cross-language ViPaq interop tests between C# and TypeScript.
  • Patched two high-severity advisories in transitive dependencies — Microsoft.OpenApi and the bundled SQLite native library.
  • Rebuilt the release pipeline. A tag now builds the image once, stages it on GHCR, smoke tests it there, then copies the tested digest to Docker Hub — so what is published is bit for bit what passed, and a failure anywhere leaves Docker Hub untouched. The release body is this changelog, extracted by the workflow.
  • Renamed two top-level folders — config/ is now tooling/, and build output goes to artifacts/ instead of build/.
  • Every GitHub Action is pinned to a commit SHA, kept current by Dependabot.

📚 Versioned Docs

  • Documentation is now versioned per minor line — v1.3.x, v2.0.x, v2.1.x, v3.0.x — so any image can be matched to its docs.
  • Backfilled the v2.0.x and v2.1.x documentation, which was previously missing.
  • The latest documentation now redirects to the current version, so existing links keep working.

🛠️ Migration Guide

To upgrade to v3.0.0, follow these steps:

  1. Remove all V2 usage

    • Any calls to V2 endpoints must be removed or migrated.
    • Replace /api/v2/presets, /api/v2/fit/by-custom, /api/v2/fit/by-preset/{preset}, /api/v2/pack/by-custom, and /api/v2/pack/by-preset/{preset} with their V3 equivalents.
  2. Switch to V3 endpoints

    • V3 requires an algorithm to be selected, where V2 used a fixed one, and drops V2's other parameters.
    • See the v2.1.x documentation for the old contract.
  3. Regenerate all ViPaq strings

    • The format was rebuilt and is not backwards compatible.
    • Strings from earlier versions no longer decode, and there is no fallback reader.
    • Re-run the packing request to get a new one. Any stored string — a saved link or a bookmarked result — is stale.
    • This applies to V3 responses as well, even though V3 is otherwise unchanged.
  4. Do not mix versions

    • Images before v3.0.0 produce the old ViPaq format; v3.0.0 onward produces and reads only the new one.
    • An encoder and a decoder on different sides of this release will not interoperate.
  5. Update Packing Logs configuration

    • Move Path, FileName, DateFormat, and ChannelLimit out of the nested Packing block, directly under PackingLogs, and delete the Fitting block.
    • Left in the old shape with Enabled: true, startup validation now fails.
    • Repoint log collection from data/pack-logs/packing/ to data/pack-logs/. The old packing/ and fitting/ directories are safe to remove.
  6. Review health check RestrictedIPs

    • Replace any start-end entries with CIDR — 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.255 becomes 192.168.1.0/24. Left as they are, startup validation now fails.
    • Re-check any CIDR entry. It now covers what it says, which is far less than before — confirm the addresses you expect are still inside it, or you will lock yourself out.
    • A range that does not line up with a CIDR boundary must be split into several entries, or widened to the enclosing subnet.
    • Drop any leading zeros — 010.10.10.10 becomes 10.10.10.10, and note it used to admit 8.10.10.10, so check that host was not the one you meant. Write IPv6 entries in the short lowercase form: 2001:0DB8::1 becomes 2001:db8::1.
    • If Binacle.Net runs behind a proxy, load balancer or CDN, enable forwarded headers as well. Without it the list is compared against the proxy's address and can never match your monitoring system.

Full Changelog: v2.1.1...v3.0.0