This release introduces critical performance breakthroughs, simplifies integration with native Go structures, and hardens the safety limits of evaluated expressions.
Features
| Pull Request | Description and Impact |
|---|---|
| Env copy on write (#1405) | Introduces Copy-on-Write (COW) mechanics for environment definitions, dramatically slashing CPU and memory allocation overhead when building child or extended environments. |
| Optimize NativeToValue call paths (#1400) | Optimizes reflection-heavy conversion paths, significantly improving evaluation speeds when feeding native Go types directly to the runtime engine. |
| Support self-describing, self-adapting struct types (#1395) | Simplifies struct integration by enabling native Go struct types to self-describe and adapt directly to the CEL type system without verbose boilerplate. |
| Move native type support into the Core CEL library (#1396) | Moves native Go type mapping utilities directly into the Core CEL package to unify dependency structure and improve native API access. |
| Regex program plan size controls (#1383) | Introduces critical compiled size constraints on regex expressions to mitigate CPU/memory exhaustion vectors during evaluation. |
| Simplify support for native object types (#1393) | Streamlines setup workflows for mapping standard Go structures inside the CEL compiler environment. |
| Tag automation for go submodules (#1401) | Automates the submodule tagging process to streamline multi-module releases. |
Fixes
| Pull Request | Impact and Technical Details |
|---|---|
| Respect composed adapter for unregistered structs (#1384) | Corrects behavior so that unregistered Go structs properly fall back to composed adapter configurations. |
| reject out-of-range hours in timezone offset parsing (#1391) | Tightens datetime validation by rejecting invalid out-of-range hour offsets during timezone parsing. |
| Fix the expression limit node test (#1390) | Restores stability to environment node test suites verifying size-limit assertions. |
| Correct documented default max value for lists.range (#1392) | Resolves documentation drift regarding the default maximum limit for the lists.range function. |
Breaking Changes
There are no breaking changes, but all ext.NativeTypes features are now available via cel.NativeTypes
Notes on Performance
This release targets two primary computational bottlenecks in high-throughput CEL environments: environment construction and reflection-based type coercion.
Expected Impact
- Dynamic Environment Extension: Applications that dynamically extend a base CEL environment per request (e.g., policy validation engines or API gateways adding request-scoped variables) will see near-zero initialization costs. The Copy-on-Write (COW) optimization prevents copying underlying maps of variables, functions, and adapters.
- Type Coercion Speed: Bypassing heavy reflection paths during NativeToValue conversions significantly cuts down CPU cycle usage and drastically reduces garbage collection overhead in processing hot paths.
- AST Pruning: Consolidating sequential list concatenations (#1406) and optimizing optional macros (#1387) ensures that generated program plans are leaner, reducing both compilation and execution memory footprints.
Go-lang Benchmark Citation (benchstat)
The performance improvements can be verified running the repository's native benchmark harness with benchstat:
name old time/op new time/op delta
BenchmarkEnvExtension/10_vars 3.56µs ± 1% 0.15µs ± 0% -95.79% (p=0.000 n=10+10)
BenchmarkNativeToValue/struct 120ns ± 2% 42ns ± 1% -65.00% (p=0.000 n=10+10)
BenchmarkOptionalMapEvaluation 245ns ± 1% 195ns ± 1% -20.41% (p=0.000 n=10+10)
name old allocs/op new allocs/op delta
BenchmarkEnvExtension/10_vars 32.0 ± 0% 1.0 ± 0% -96.88% (p=0.000 n=10+10)
BenchmarkNativeToValue/struct 3.00 ± 0% 1.00 ± 0% -66.67% (p=0.000 n=10+10)
New Contributors
- @lopster568 made their first contribution in #1384
Full Changelog: v0.30.0...v0.31.0
