v1.2.0

🚀 Added

🚗 Switched to inference-models as default inference engine

As announced at the beginning of the 1.x.y release series, we've been working to make inference-models the default engine — and it's now live. The old inference backend remains available in opt-out mode.

Along with this change (and related updates to torch handling), we've updated the recommended installation flow for the inference-gpu Python package. Install torch and torchvision first — selecting the variant and CUDA index that matches your environment — then install inference-gpu:

pip install --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128 torch torchvision  # adjust CUDA version as needed
pip install inference-gpu

Additionally, since inference-models depends on pycuda, you'll need CUDA installed with the development toolkit (including headers required to build pycuda). Follow the appropriate installation guide for your platform:

• Linux CUDA Installation Guide
• Windows CUDA Installation Guide

Tip

To continue using the old inference backend, set the environment variable USE_INFERENCE_MODELS=False.

Important

inference-models manages its cache differently from the old backend. To enable automatic model eviction in long-running containers, activate the Cache Watchdog — it monitors disk usage and removes files when storage exceeds the configured threshold.

Set MAX_INFERENCE_MODELS_CACHE_SIZE_MB to enable it. You can also control how often it runs with INFERENCE_MODELS_CACHE_WATCHDOG_INTERVAL_MINUTES. We recommend enabling this only if there's a risk of running out of disk space on your server.

🛤️ trackers 🤝 Workflows

The new Roboflow open-source library - trackers just got onboarded to workflows.

Thanks to @leeclemnet (#2130) we have three new blocks:

New Block	Type Slug	Algorithm
bytetrack/v1.py	roboflow_core/trackers_bytetrack@v1	ByteTrack
sort/v1.py	roboflow_core/trackers_sort@v1	SORT
ocsort/v1.py	roboflow_core/trackers_ocsort@v1	OC-SORT

🔥 New Workflows blocks

• GLM-OCR model now has Workflows coverage - after adding the model to inference-models last week, @Erol444 this week made a contribution to Workflows 💪
• @jeku46 in #2171 added structured Event Write block to the pool of Enterprise plugins

Workflows Community plugins

Check out our new documentation page - with Workflows Community plugins highlighting community work around Workflows ecosystem.

🔧 Fixed

• Add in-process LRU cache for model metadata lookups by @hansent in #2142
• Pin OTel packages to fix CPU Docker build resolution by @hansent in #2146
• Fix CI by letting tests regarding inference-gpu installation to run on machine which actually have required system libraries by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2147
• Add ability to restrict max input resolution for rfdetr model by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2145
• Fix/ci after switch to inference models by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2149
• [CS-146] Fix issue with multi-label classification adapter returning wrong values by @dkosowski87 in #2157
• Fix issue with non-exsiting test asset image by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2168
• Fix/clean webrtc worker shutdown on arm by @grzegorz-roboflow in #2169
• Fix keypoints stored as object-dtype arrays breaking supervision indexing by @grzegorz-roboflow in #2170
• Add orjson serialization to outputs by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2165
• Add change making Roboflow Weights Provider (in inference-models) to respect license server proxy by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2172

🚧 Maintenance

• Add OpenTelemetry tracing and metrics by @hansent in #2141
• Add change to make inference-models default backend by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2144
• Add special handling for local API key by @yeldarby in #2153
• Bump inference-models version and clarify docs regarding installation by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2162
• Add community plugins page by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2163
• Cut a release by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2175
• Move batch processing docs to docs.roboflow.com by @Erol444 in #2167
• Allow keypoints in velocity block by @grzegorz-roboflow in #2155
• Add detailed OTel inference sub-spans and X-Trace-Id response header by @hansent in #2148
• Do not send usage from modal only when webrtc connection could not have been established by @grzegorz-roboflow in #2173
• Add change to add job name to batch processing jobs by @PawelPeczek-Roboflow in #2143

Full Changelog: v1.1.2...v1.2.0