Release v5.3.3 · HarperFast/harper

Transactions and replication

A write that reached the transaction log always commits. rocksdb-js writes an audited transaction's log entry during the first native commit, before it checks for conflicts. Before, Harper could give up on a commit that conflicted after that point: on its retry cap, its conflict budget, a lapsed record-lock lease, or a closing database. The log then held a write the database never applied. Such a commit now retries until it lands, as replication-applied writes already do, and keeps its record locks until then. (#3266)
Replicated duplicate retries no longer walk audit history. Sometimes a replicated write had already committed while its first attempt hit a conflict. Its retry then searched audit history even though the stored record showed the write had already landed. Receivers could stall on old audit entries or apply an increment twice. The retry now recognizes a write that has already landed before it reads the audit log. (#3366)

Tables without a primary key no longer block startup. On upgrade to 5.2 or 5.3, a catalog row that lost its isPrimaryKey flag stopped Harper from starting ("The system database failed to load"). If the app schema declared a primary key on such a table, the whole schema failed to load, healthy tables included. Both cases now load, as they did on 5.1. (#3244)
Malformed configuration YAML is rejected. A root config with YAML parse errors or duplicate keys could be adopted without warning. Harper now rejects it before any thread uses it, and the error reports the code and location without echoing the file's contents. (#2986)

Last wills are published for non-super users. Before, the server read the will's system.hdb_session_will row as the client, so only super users ever had a will published. Other users' wills were dropped, their rows leaked, and each disconnect logged Error publishing MQTT will. The will's publish is now authorized like the client's other publishes, and the server manages the row itself. (#3302)
MQTT v5 reports a missing login as Not authorized (0x87). When mqtt.requireAuthentication is off, an anonymous client's SUBSCRIBE or PUBLISH to a protected topic now fails with 0x87 instead of 0x80 ("Unspecified error"). A delivery that races a disconnect now logs the topic it was for. (#3303)

Nested select no longer returns 500 on missing relationships. A nested selection now keeps a missing relationship target, and projects ordinary JSON values instead of failing the request. (#3171)
Gzip from Node middleware is no longer corrupt on Node 26.11+. A new pipe fast path in Node 26.11 bypassed the compression middleware's patched res.write inside withNodeAdapter responses, which corrupted gzip responses. Piped chunks now go through write(). install_node_modules also parses npm's JSON report, so it returns the same object on every npm version, including 11.20. (#3108)
package_component no longer packs the Harper install once per plugin. When node_modules was included, it followed each sub-component's node_modules/harper link and packed the whole running install every time. That made every clone of an app with a plugin much larger and slower. Those links are now left out, and the size estimate still matches what is packed. (#3216)

Aggregates no longer store NaN for measures missing from some samples. A measure that a metric's first sample lacked was stored as NaN, or dropped for per-thread metrics. Each measure is now folded over only the samples that carry it, which also corrects a mean that had counted samples without the measure. Measures present in every sample aggregate exactly as before. (#3139)

New tests confirming that a backup purge waits for create_backup to publish its backup (#3319, #3378), plus design-note updates.

Full changelog: v5.3.2...v5.3.3