The entries below contain brief descriptions of the changes in each release, in no particular order. Some of the entries reflect significant new additions, while others represent minor corrections. Although this list is not a comprehensive report of every change we made in a release, it does provide details on the changes we feel Ice users might need to be aware of.

We recommend that you use the release notes as a guide for migrating your applications to this release, and the manual for complete details on a particular aspect of Ice.

Changes in Ice 3.7.3
Changes in Ice 3.7.2
Changes in Ice 3.7.1
Changes in Ice 3.7.0

Changes in Ice 3.7.3

These are the changes since Ice 3.7.2.

General Changes

Fixed Slice compilers to allow forward declared interfaces and classes that are marshaled or unmarshaled in a Slice file without being fully defined in that Slice file. This was allowed (but not documented) in Ice 3.6 and earlier releases, and disallowed in Ice 3.7.0 - Ice 3.7.2.
Added ice_isFixed proxy method to test whether a proxy is a fixed proxy or not.
Fixed a retry bug occurring with invocations made on proxies configured with the backward compatible invocation timeout -2. The invocation failed instead of being retried.
Added support to enable SNI (Server Name Indication) in outgoing SSL/TLS connections. The SNI TLS extension is enabled by setting IceSSL.CheckCertName to 2.

This new value for IceSSL.CheckCertName is useful with OpenSSL, SecureTransport and Java; these implementations did not send the SNI extension before. The C# and SChannel implementations always send the SNI extension. The Java-Compat mapping does not support SNI. Thanks to @AndiDog for the pull request: zeroc-ice#482
Fixed a bug in the conversion of endpoints to strings: the colon character was not escaped in the --sourceAddress and --interface endpoint options.
Fixed IceGrid issue which could cause hangs if an IceGrid node became unreachable and a client either tried to get adapter endpoints with IceGrid::Admin::getAdapterInfo or called IceGrid::Query::findAllReplicas.
Fixed IceGrid issue where gracefully interrupted IceGrid nodes wouldn't notify observers of the deactivation of its servers.
Fixed bug where the IceGrid.Registry.CryptPasswords or IceGrid.Registry.AdminCryptPasswords properties were ignored if the IceGrid registry was collocated with the IceGrid node executable using the IceGrid.Node.CollocateRegistry property.
Fixed IceGrid node bug where the setting of supplementary groups would fail if the user had more than NGROUPS_MAX groups.
Fixed IceGrid node bug where the setting of supplementary groups for a server ran as a given user was incorrect when running the IceGrid node as root. The server would be ran with the root/wheel supplementary group.
Fixed a bug in IceGrid node that could result in an infinite loop when the system call to getpwuid_r fails with ERANGE.
Removed IceStorm restriction where retryCount could only be used with two-way proxies. It's now possible to use it with one-way or batch proxies.

C++ Changes

Added new metadata directive cpp:source-include, to include a header file in the generated source (.cpp) file.
Fixed build failures on Linux ppc64el due to __linux macro not being defined in C++11 mode. Switched to __linux__ macro.
Added support for Visual Studio 2019.
Fixed GCC 9 build failures.
Added support for AIX 7.2 with the IBM XL C/C++ 16.1 compiler (C++98 only).
Fixed a bug in IceSSL that could result in IceSSL::ConnectionInfo not having the verified data member set to false when the certificate hostname verification failed. This affected IceSSL based on OpenSSL < 1.0.2 and SChannel.
Fixed IceSSL to ignore hostname verification errors when IceSSL.VerifyPeer is set to 0. This affected IceSSL based on OpenSSL >= 1.0.2.

C# Changes

Added back support for caching the output stream used to marshal the response of a synchronous dispatch.
Fixed C# to not require unsafe code. AllowUnsafeBlocks is not longer set when building Ice for C#.
Fixed loading of Bzip2 native libraries on Linux to fallback to libbz2.so.1 if libbz2.so.1.0 doesn't exists.
Fixed IceSSL to ignore hostname verification errors when IceSSL.VerifyPeer is set to 0.

Java Changes

Added back support for caching the output stream used to marshal the response of a synchronous dispatch.
Added support to build Ice as modular JAR files. This is automatically done when building Ice for Java with JDK 9 or greater. The resulting JARs are compatible with JDK 8.

JavaScript Changes

Fixed a bug in the IP endpoint initialization. The default value for the port was null instead of 0.

MATLAB Changes

Added support for the Ice.ClassGraphDepthMax property to prevent a stack overflow in case a sender sends a very large graph. This was already supported with other language mappings but it was missing in MATLAB.
Fixed a bug in the ice_isA implementation that resulted in ice_isA throwing FacetNotExistException when it should return null.

Python Changes

Fixed a bug where using an optional data member with the python:numpy.ndarray sequence mapping could result in a segmentation fault of the python interpreter.
Fixed a bug where using an empty sequence with a type that uses the Python buffer protocol could result in an assert if running with a python debug build.

Changes in Ice 3.7.2

These are the changes since Ice 3.7.1.

General Changes

Add support for TLS 1.3 to IceSSL.
Add support for reading Ice properties from the HKCU Windows registry hive. Previously you could only read properties from the HKLM Windows registry hive.

C++ Changes

Fixed bug where Ice thread pools would print an invalid and harmless "low on threads" warning message when the thread pool was destroyed and if the number of threads in the thread pool was superior or equal to the SizeWarn property.
Fixed a bug where the callback set with the IceUtil::CtrlCHandler was not cleared on destruction of the CtrlCHandler object. Variables captured by the callback were therefore not released until static destruction. This fix ensures that the destruction of the CtrlCHandler object clears the callback.
Fixed a debug assert in the Windows SChannel IceSSL implementation which would occur in rare circumstances where SChannel returned SEC_E_INCOMPLETE_MESSAGE with a cbBuffer value of 0. This occurred when running the JavaScript tests with Firefox and using a C++ debug build.
Fixed a bug in the syslog logger that caused the program name to not be correctly displayed with log messages.
Fixed an IceStorm bug that prevented topics from being restored from the database when there was multiple topics.
Added support for systemd Type=Notify to Ice::Service. Services started without the --daemon command-line option send notifications to systemd using the sd_notify API.
Added systemd journal logger. This logger is enabled by setting the Ice.UseSystemdJournal property to a value of 1 or greater.
Fixed memory leak in the Ice iAP transport where the EASession object wasn't correctly released. Thanks to @astreube on GitHub for reporting this bug and suggesting a fix.
Fixed a bug in the Windows build system that disabled wildcard expansion for Slice compiler command line arguments.
Fixed a bug in the code that parses command line options that caused short command line options to be incorrectly parsed when multiple short command line options are specified together.
Fixed a bug in IceGrid that could result in an infinite loop when Ice.ChangeUser is set and the call to getpwnam_r fails with ERANGE.
Fixed SChannel initialization to use a global mutex to avoid crashes occurring with latest SChannel updates. See: zeroc-ice#242
Add support to build Ice in C++17 mode.
Add support for ARM builds with RHELP and CentOS.
Allow users to configure the adapter created by icegridadmin when run in server mode. Thanks to Michael Dorner for the pull request: zeroc-ice#58

C# Changes

Fixed metrics bug where remote invocations for flushBatchRequests weren't counted.
Add ability to build .NET Core assemblies with strong name.
Add Android, iOS and UWP platform support to Ice for .NET Core. The Ice test suite now works with Xamarin and runs on Android, iOS and UWP.
Fixed marshaling code: removed unsafe code used in ByteBuffer that was causing problems with mono on Android.
Fixed a bug in slice2cs that could result in generated code using invalid namespace qualification for a type. See: zeroc-ice#122
Removed dependency on the Ice Builder Visual Studio Extension for C# source builds.
You can now map Slice modules to custom C# namespaces using the cs:namespace metadata directive.

Java Changes

Fixed bug where Ice thread pools would print an invalid and harmless "low on threads" warning message when the thread pool was destroyed and if the number of threads in the thread pool was superior or equal to the SizeWarn property.
Fixed Android IceSSL issue that caused SSL connections to hang with Android >= 8.0.
Fixed metrics bug where remote invocations for flushBatchRequests weren't counted.
Improved Javadoc support for the Java mapping (and not Java-Compat). Internal classes and methods with public or protected visibility are now excluded or tagged @hidden. Since @hidden requires javadoc 9 or greater, javadoc is no longer generated with javadoc 8. The new Gradle target alljavadoc generates a complete API reference for all Ice components (Ice, IceSSL, IceGrid, IceStorm, Glacier2, etc.).
IceGrid GUI settings are now stored in the operating system application data directory %LOCALAPPDATA%/ZeroC for Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/ZeroC for macOS and ~/.ZeroC for Linux. Previous settings are automatically migrated to the new location without user intervention.
Add support to build IceGrid GUI with OpenJFX and Java 11 JDK.
Fixed a bug in the IceGrid GUI that could cause IceGrid GUI to hang after a login failure.

JavaScript Changes

Add TypeScript declaration files for Ice for JavaScript.
The Slice to JavaScript compiler can now generate TypeScript declaration files for JavaScript generated code using the --typescript command line option.
Fixed generated code for sequences of interface by value types. The generated sequence helper must use Ice.Value as the element type for the sequence and not a class with the name of the interface when the element type is an interface by value.
Add missing OutputStream.writeException method.
Update JavaScript build system to Babel 7 and gulp 4.0. Support for building Ice for JavaScript with NodeJS 4 and NodeJS 5 has been removed.
Fixed a bug in Slice-to-JavaScript compiler that resulted in incorrect generated code for classes containing a data member of type Value. Thanks to Daniel Lytkin for the bug report and fix. See zeroc-ice#203

MATLAB Changes

Fixed a bug that caused the code generated by slice2matlab to throw a type conversion exception. This affected classes or structs containing a dictionary mapped to a structure array.
Add support for IceSSL::ConnectionInfo.

Objective-C Changes

Fixed a bug in Slice-to-Objective-C compiler that resulted in incorrect generated code for classes containing a data member of type Value.

PHP Changes

Fixed build failure when building with the Debug configuration on Windows.
Fixed a bug that caused the generated code to reference undefined variables when included (using require or require_once) from a static method.

Python Changes

Add support for unmarshaling sequences of basic types using the buffer protocol. This can be enabled using the metadata python:array.array, python:numpy.ndarray or python:memoryview:<factory>. The first two enable mapping to the array.array and numpy.ndarray types respectively and the last one allows to specify a custom Python factory function responsible for creating the sequence from a memoryview object.
Add python:default, python:list and python:tuple metadata which are equivalent to python:seq:default, python:seq:list and python:seq:tuple respectively.
Fixed Python segfault that could occur because of a KeyboardInterrupt.
Add support to build Ice for Python using Python 3.7.

Changes in Ice 3.7.1

These are the changes since Ice 3.7.0.

General Changes

Fixed UDP multicast issue where adding multicast membership on all the available network interfaces on the host would fail with an "Address already in use" error if the host had network interfaces with multiple IPv4 addresses or different interfaces using the same IP address.
Improved Ice::ObjectAdapter getPublishedEndpoints and refreshPublishedEndpoints methods to now return or refresh the Ice router server endpoints if the adapter is associated with a router. Calling the setPublishedEndpoints method on an adapter associated with a router also now raises an invalid argument exception.
Added tracing support for IceGrid and locator discovery. The IceGrid registry supports the IceGrid.Registry.Trace.Discovery property and the IceLocatorDiscovery plug-in supports IceLocatorDiscovery.Trace.Lookup to trace lookup requests.
Instead of succeeding, Ice::Connection::setAdapter now raises Ice.ObjectAdapterDeactivatedException if the adapter is deactivated.
Fixed bug where the IceGrid.Registry.Client.ACM.Timeout property setting was ignored.
Added the ice_fixed proxy method to create a fixed proxy bound to a given connection.
Added the ice_getTimeout and ice_getCompress proxy methods. These methods return an optional value that contains the proxy timeout or compression override setting. If the timeout or the compression setting haven't been overridden with ice_timeout or ice_compress, the optional value is unset.
Fixed IceGrid node bug where a replica would not get up-to-date object adapter information about a server if an update was pending for the server. Thanks to Michael Gmelin for the bug report and fix.
Fixed IceGrid registry to no longer allow dynamic registration of a replica group if this replica group is already registered with the deployment facility. Registration was previously allowed but the dynamically registered adapter members of the replica group were never used.
IceBridge can now be configured as a router in a client's object adapter, which means the Ice run time in the client will automatically set up a bidirectional connection.

C++ Changes

Fixed a Windows bug with the WS transport where at-most-once semantics weren't always enforced causing invalid invocation retries on failures.
Added the "cpp:noexcept" metadata to operations in several local Slice interfaces, including Communicator, Connection, and ObjectAdapter. This helps to clarify that these operations do not raise exceptions.
Slice documentation comments are now preserved in the generated C++ code using Doxygen markup.

C# Changes

Disabled Windows fast path loopback socket option. This option was already disabled with the C++ mapping. It's causing hangs at the TCP/IP level when connections are closed.
Added support for .NET Core 2.0 on Windows and Linux.
Added the ice_initialize partial method to generated structs and classes. This method is called by constructors after initialization of the data members. By implementing this method users can customize struct and class initialization.

Java Changes

The java:package metadata can now be applied to modules. It can still be used as global metadata, in which case it serves as the default directive unless overridden by module metadata.

JavaScript Changes

Updated the generated code for compatibility with WebPack.

MATLAB Changes

Added a MATLAB language mapping. It provides a client-side run time and supports MATLAB versions R2016a through R2018a on Windows.

Objective-C Changes

Fixed the generated code to specify the __autoreleasing qualifier on parameters returned by reference. Xcode 9.0 now emits a warning if this qualifier is omitted.

PHP Changes

Fixed Ice for PHP build failure when building with PHP5 ZTS.

Python Changes

The python:package metadata can now be applied to modules. It can still be used as global metadata, in which case it serves as the default directive unless overridden by module metadata.
Fixed a bug that caused Python to crash on exit when the extension is built with GCC 7.

Ruby Changes

Ice::initialize now accepts an implicit block. If provided, initialize will pass the communicator (and optionally the argument vector) to the block, destroy the communicator upon the block's completion, and return the block's result as the result of initialize.

Changes in Ice 3.7.0

These are the changes since the Ice 3.6 release or snapshot described in CHANGELOG-3.6.md.

General Changes

Added ice_getSlicedData method to the Value and UserException base classes. This method can be used to obtain the sliced data when available.
Fixed IceGrid inconsistency when resolving dynamically registered replica group endpoints. Like for replica group registered with descriptors, if the replica group members don't support the encoding requested by the client, the client will raise Ice::NoEndpointException instead of Ice::NotRegisteredException.
Defining operations on non-local classes is now deprecated: operations should be defined only on interfaces and local classes. Likewise, having a class implement an interface, passing a class by proxy and passing an interface by value are now deprecated.
Added new Slice keyword Value. All Slice classes implicitly derive from the Value class, and a parameter of type Value can represent any class instance. In prior release, the base class for Slice classes was Object, and for non-local definitions, Object remains a synonym for Value. (However, Value* is invalid: it cannot be used as a synonym for Object*). For local definitions, Object designates a servant while Value designates a class instance.

Semicolons are now optional after braces in Slice definitions. For example

module M
{
    enum { A, B, C , D }

    interface Intf
    {
        void op();
    }
}

is equivalent to

module M
{
    enum { A, B, C , D };

    interface Intf
    {
        void op();
    };
};

The server run time will now bind to all the addresses associated with a DNS name specified in an endpoint of the object adapter (with the endpoint -h option). You must make sure the DNS name resolves to local addresses only.

If no PublishedEndpoints property is specified for the object adapter, the published endpoints for an endpoint with a DNS name will either be, if the endpoint doesn't specifies a fixed port, a list of endpoints with each of the addresses associated with the DNS name or, if it specifies a fixed port, the endpoint with the DNS name.
Added the IceBridge service, which acts as a bridge between a client and server to relay requests and replies in both directions.
Added new operation metadata, marshaled-result, in C++11, C#, Java, and Python. When this metadata is specified, the generated code for the servant dispatch returns a generated struct that contains the marshaled values for the return and out parameters.

A Slice enumeration (enum) now creates a new namespace scope for its enumerators. In previous releases, the enumerators were in the same namespace scope as the enumeration. For example:

   enum Fruit { Apple, Orange, Pear }
   enum ComputerBrands { Apple, Dell, HP } // Ok as of Ice 3.7, error in
                                            // prior releases

The mapping of enum to C++, C#, Java etc. is not affected by this change. Slice constants and data member default values that reference enumerators should be updated to use only the enumerator's name when the enclosing enum is in a different module. For example:

module M1
{
    enum Fruit { Apple, Orange, Pear }
    enum ComputerBrands { Apple, Dell, HP }

    const Fruit a = Apple; // Recommended syntax for all Ice releases
}

module M2
{
    const M1::Fruit a1 = Apple;             // The recommended syntax as of
                                            // Ice 3.7
    const M1::Fruit a2 = M1::Fruit::Apple;  // Ok as well
    const M1::Fruit a3 = M1::Apple;         // Supported for backwards
                                            // compatibility with earlier
                                            // Ice releases
}

Added Bluetooth transport plug-in for C++ and Android. The C++ plug-in requires BlueZ 5.40 or later.
Added support for iAP transport to allow iOS clients to communicate with connected accessories.
Added new overloads to Ice::initialize in C++11, C++98, C#, Java, Java Compat, Python and Ruby. They accept a configFile string parameter as an alternative to the InitializationData parameter of several existing Ice::initialize overloads.
Added support for a new Ice.ClassGraphDepthMax property to prevent stack overflows in case a sender sends a very large graph.

The unmarshaling or destruction of a graph of Slice class instances is a recursive operation. This property limits the amount of stack size required to perform these operations. This property is supported with all the language mappings except Java and JavaScript where it's not needed (the run time environment allows graceful handling of stack overflows).

The default maximum class graph depth is 100. If you increase this value, you must ensure the thread pool stack size is large enough to allow reading graphs without causing a stack overflow.
Minor change to the network and retry tracing. Connection establishment attempts on endpoints are no longer traced with Ice.Trace.Retry. They are now traced when Ice.Trace.Network is set to 2.
Renamed ACM heartbeat enumerator HeartbeatOnInvocation to HeartbeatOnDispatch.
Added Ice::ObjectAdapter::setPublishedEndpoints to allow updating the published endpoints programmatically.
Added new ice_id method or member function to all Ice exceptions; ice_id returns the Slice type ID of the exception. It replaces the now deprecated ice_name method or member function.
Added Ice::Connection::throwException. When the connection is closed, this method throws an exception indicating the reason of the connection closure.
Changed the Slice definition of the Connection::close operation to take an enumerator instead of a boolean. The new enumeration, ConnectionClose, defines three enumerators for controlling how the connection is closed:
- Forcefully - Closes the connection immediately. Equivalent to the boolean value true in previous releases.
- Gracefully - Closes the connection gracefully without waiting for pending invocations to complete.
- GracefullyWithWait - Closes the connection gracefully after all pending invocations have completed. Equivalent to the boolean value false in previous releases.
The Ice::ForcedCloseConnectionException exception has also been replaced with Ice::ConnectionManuallyClosedException. This exception is set on the connection when Connection::close is called.
Added support for IceStorm subscriber locatorCacheTimeout and connectionCached QoS settings. These settings match the proxy settings and allow configuring per-request load balancing on the subscriber proxy.
Implementations of the Ice::Router interface can now indicate whether or not they support a routing table through the optional out parameter hasRoutingTable of the getClientProxy operation. The Ice run time won't call the addProxies operation if the router implementation indicates that it doesn't manage a routing table.
The findObjectByType, findAllObjectsByType, findObjectByTypeOnLeastLoadedNode operations from the IceGrid::Query interface and the allocateObjectByType operation from the IceGrid::Session interfaces now only return proxies for Ice objects from enabled servers. If a server is disabled, its well-known or allocatable Ice objects won't be returned anymore to clients.
The Communicator and Connection flushBatchRequests operations now require an argument to specify whether or not the batch requests to flush should be compressed. See the documentation of the Ice::CompressBatch enumeration for the different options available to specify when the batch should be compressed.
The UDP server endpoint now supports specifying --interface * to join the multicast group using all the local interfaces. It's also now the default behavior if no --interface option is specified.
Ice no longer halts a program if it can't accept new incoming connections when the system runs out of file descriptors. Instead, it rejects queued pending connections and temporarily stops accepting new connections. An error message is also sent to the Ice logger.
Dispatch interceptors and ice_dispatch can now catch user exceptions. User exceptions raised by a servant dispatch are propagated to ice_dispatch and may be raised by the implementation of Ice::DispatchInterceptor::dispatch. As a result, the Ice::DispatchStatus enumeration has been removed. See the Ice Manual for details on the new dispatch interceptor API.
The ice_getConnection operation now correctly returns a connection if connection caching is disabled (it previously returned a null connection).
The iOS SSL transport is now based on the same implementation as macOS. Most of the functionality supported on macOS is now also supported on iOS. There are still few limitations however:
- the checkValidity, getNotBefore, getNotAfter methods are not supported on the IceSSL::Certificate class.
- only PKCS12 certificates are supported (no support for PEM).
The Ice::ConnectionInfo sndSize and rcvSize data members have been moved to the TCP and UDP connection info classes. The Ice::WSEndpointInfo and IceSSL::EndpointInfo classes no longer inherit Ice::IPConnectionInfo and instead directly extend Ice::ConnectionInfo. IP connection information can still be retrieved by accessing the connection information object stored with the new underlying data member.
IceGrid and IceStorm now use LMDB for their persistent storage instead of Freeze/Berkeley DB.
Added support for two additional IceGrid variables: server.data and service.data. These variables point to server and service specific data directories created by IceGrid on the node. These data directories are automatically removed by IceGrid if you remove the server from the deployment.

For consistency, the node.datadir variable has been deprecated, use the node.data variable instead.
Added the new metadata tag delegate for local interfaces with one operation. Interfaces with this metadata will be generated as a std::function in C++11, delegate in C#, FunctionalInterface in Java, function callback in JavaScript, block in Objective-C, function/lambda in Python. Other language mappings keep their default behavior.
ObjectFactory has been deprecated in favor of the new local interface ValueFactory. Communicator operations addObjectFactoryand findObjectFactory have been deprecated in favor of similar operations on the new interface ValueFactoryManager.
Replaced Ice::NoObjectFactoryException with Ice::NoValueFactoryException.
The Slice compiler options --ice and --underscore are now deprecated, and replaced by the global Slice metadata ice-prefix and underscore.
Renamed local interface metadata async to async-oneway.
Replaced ConnectionCallback by delegates CloseCallback and HeartbeatCallback. Also replaced setCallback by setCloseCallback and setHeartbeatCallback on the Connection interface.
Updating Windows build system to use MSBuild instead of nmake.
Changed the parsing of hex escape sequences (\x....) in Slice string literals: the parsing now stops after 2 hex digits. For example, \x0ab is now read as \x0a followed by b. Previously all the hex digits were read like in C++.
Stringified identities and proxies now support non-ASCII characters and universal character names (\unnnn and \Unnnnnnnn). See the property Ice.ToStringMode and the static function/method identityToString.
Fixed proxies stringification: Communicator::proxyToString and equivalent "to string" methods on fixed proxies no longer raise a FixedProxyException; the proxy is just stringified without endpoints.
An empty endpoint in an Object Adapter endpoint list is now rejected with an EndpointParseException; such an endpoint was ignored in previous releases.
IcePatch2 and IceGrid's distribution mechanism (based on IcePatch2) are now deprecated.
Updated IceSSL hostname verification (enabled with IceSSL.CheckCertName) to use the native checks of the platform's SSL implementation.
Removed IceSSL::NativeConnectionInfo. IceSSL::ConnectionInfo's certs data member is now mapped to the native certificate type in C++, Java and C#. In other languages, it remains mapped to a string sequence containing the PEM encoded certificates.
Freeze has been moved to its own source repository, https://github.com/zeroc-ice/freeze.
Added support for suppressing Slice warnings using the [["suppress-warning"]] global metadata directive. If one or more categories are specified (for example "suppress-warning:invalid-metadata" or "suppress-warning:deprecated, invalid-metadata") only warnings matching these categories are suppressed, otherwise all warnings are suppressed.

C++ Changes

Added Ice::SlicedData::clear method to allow clearing the slices associated with the slice data. Calling clear can be useful if the sliced data contains cycles. You should call this method if your application receives sliced values which might contain cycles.
Added a new C++11 mapping that takes advantage of C++11 language features. This new mapping is very different from the Slice-to-C++ mapping provided in prior releases. The old mapping, now known as the C++98 mapping, is still supported so that existing applications can be migrated to Ice 3.7 without much change.
Added support for Visual Studio 2010 (C++98 only)
The Ice::Communicator and Ice::ObjectAdapter destroy functions are now declared as noexcept (C++11) or throw() (C++98).
Added new helper class Ice::CommunicatorHolder. CommunicatorHolder creates a Communicator in its constructor and destroys it in its destructor.
The --dll-export option of slice2cpp is now deprecated, and replaced by the global Slice metadata cpp:dll-export:SYMBOL.
The UDP and WS transports are no longer enabled by default with static builds of the Ice library. You need to register them explicitly with the Ice::registerIceUDP or Ice::registerIceWS function to use these transports with your statically linked application.

NOTE: this affects UWP and iOS applications which are linked statically with Ice libraries.
Added cpp:scoped metadata for enums in the C++98 mapping. The generated C++ enumerators for a "scoped enum" are prefixed with the enumeration's name. For example:
```
   // Slice
   ["cpp:scoped"] enum Fruit { Apple, Orange, Pear }
```
corresponds to:
```
   // C++98
   enum Fruit { FruitApple, FruitOrange, FruitPear };
```
Upgrade the UWP IceSSL implementation to support client side certificates and custom certificate verification.
Added getOpenSSLVersion function to IceSSL::OpenSSL::Plugin to retrieve the OpenSSL version used by the Ice run time.
Added getAuthorityKeyIdentifier and getSubjectKeyIdentifier functions to IceSSL::Certificate. These functions are not supported on iOS or UWP.
Improved the IceSSL Certificate API to allow retrieving X509v3 extensions. This feature is currently only available with OpenSSL and SChannel.
Refactored the IceSSL Plug-in API to allow loading multiple implementations of the plug-in in the same process. Each communicator can load a single implementation, but separate communicators in the same process can load different implementations.
Added ability to build IceSSL with OpenSSL on Windows. The resulting library is named icesslopenssl. An application can load this plug-in with the IceSSLOpenSSL:createIceSSLOpenSSL entry point.
Added IceSSL.SchannelStrongCrypto property: when set to a value greater than 0, the IceSSL SChannel implementation sets the SCH_USE_STRONG_CRYPTO flag, which instructs SChannel to disable weak cryptographic algorithms. The default values for this property is 0 for increased interoperability.
Improve Linux stack traces generated by Exception::ice_stackTrace, by using libbacktrace when available.
Fixed IceGrid PlatformInfo to report the correct release and version number for recent versions of Windows.
IceSSL has been updated to support OpenSSL 1.1.0 version.

C# Changes

Added a new C# AMI mapping based on TAP (Task-based Asynchronous Pattern). With this mapping, you can use the C# async/away keywords with asynchronous invocations and dispatches (AMI and AMD).
Updated the AMD mapping to be Task-based. Chaining AMD and AMI calls is now straightforward.
Added the proxy method ice_scheduler. It returns an instance of System.Threading.Tasks.TaskScheduler that you can pass to Task methods such as ContinueWith in order to force a continuation to be executed by an Ice thread pool thread.
The batchRequestInterceptor data member of Ice.InitializationData is now defined as a System.Action<Ice.BatchRequest, int, int> delegate. You will need to update your code accordingly if you were using the now removed Ice.BatchRequestInterceptor interface.
The Ice.PropertiesUpdateCallback interface is deprecated, use the System.Action<Dictionary<string, string>> delegate instead to receive property updates.
The threadHook member of InitializationData is now deprecated. Instead, set threadStart and threadStop.
The Ice.ClassResolver delegate has been replaced with the System.Func<string, Type> delegate. The Ice.CompactIdResolver delegate has been replaced with the System.Func<int, string> delegate. The Ice.Dispatcher delegate has been replaced with the System.Action<System.Action, Ice.Connection> delegate.
Added new interface/class metadata cs:tie. Use this metadata to generate a tie class for a given interface or class.
cs: and clr: are now interchangeable in metadata directives.
Add support to preload referenced assemblies. The property Ice.PreloadAssemblies controls this behavior. If set to a value greater than 0 the Ice run-time will try to load all the assemblies referenced by the process during communicator initialization, otherwise the referenced assemblies will be initialized when the Ice run-time needs to lookup a C# class. The default value is 0.
Update C# proxy implementation to implement ISerializable.

Java Changes

Added a new Java mapping that takes advantage of Java 8 language features. The new mapping is significantly different than prior releases in many ways, including the package name (com.zeroc) as well as APIs such as AMI, AMD, out parameters and optional values. The prior mapping, now known as Java Compat, is still supported so that existing applications can be migrated to Ice 3.7 without much change.
The Ice Communicator interface now implements java.lang.AutoCloseable. This enables the code to initialize the communicator within a try-with-resources statement. The communicator will be destroyed automatically at the end of this statement.
Fixed a bug where unmarshaling Ice objects was very slow when using compact type IDs.
(Java) Added the proxy method ice_executor, which returns an instance of java.util.concurrent.Executor that you can pass to CompletableFuture methods such as whenCompleteAsync in order to force an action to be executed by an Ice thread pool thread.
(Java Compat) Added new interface/class metadata java:tie. Use this metadata to generate a tie class for a given interface or class.
Protocol compression now uses Bzip2 implementation from Apache Commons Compress, previous versions use Bizp2 implementation from Apache Ant.

JavaScript Changes

Improved the Ice.Long class to allow creating Ice.Long instance from JavaScript Numbers.
Updated the Ice.Promise class. It now extends the standard JavaScript Promise class.
The Ice.Class helper function used to create classes has been removed. The Ice run time and the generated code now use the JavaScript class keyword to define the classes.
Ice.HashMap usage is now limited to dictionaries with mutable keys, for all other cases the standard JavaScript Map type is used.
Ice.HashMap API has been aligned with the API of JavaScript Map type.
Added support to map Slice modules to JavaScript native modules this requires using the global metadata [["js:es6-module"]].
The ["amd"] metadata is now ignored in JavaScript. An operation can now be be dispatched asynchronously by just returning a JavaScript Promise object.
sequence<byte> is now always mapped to the Uint8Array JavaScript type. It used to be mapped to the Buffer type for NodeJS and to Uint8Array for browsers.
The helper method Ice.Buffer.createNative has been removed and replaced by the use of Uint8Array.

Objective-C Changes

Added clear selector to ICESlicedData to allow clearing the slices associated with the slice data. Calling clear can be useful if the sliced data contains cycles. You should call this method if your application receives sliced values which might contain cycles.
The UDP and WS transports are no longer enabled by default with static builds of the IceObjC library. You need to register them explicitly with the ICEregisterIceUDP or ICEregisterIceWS function to use these transports with your statically linked application.

NOTE: this affects iOS applications which are linked statically with Ice libraries.
Fixed a bug where optional object dictionary parameters would trigger an assert on marshaling.
The --dll-export option of slice2objc is now deprecated, and replaced by the global Slice metadata objc:dll-export:SYMBOL.

Added objc:scoped metadata for enums. The generated Objective-C enumerators for a "scoped enum" are prefixed with the enumeration's name. For example:

// Slice
module M
{
   ["objc:scoped"] enum Fruit { Apple, Orange, Pear }
}

corresponds to:

// Objective-C
typedef enum : ICEInt
{
    MFruitApple,
    MFruitPear,
    MFruitOrange
} MFruit;

PHP Changes

Ice for PHP now uses namespace by default.
Added support for PHP 7.0 and PHP 7.1.
The symbol used to indicate an unset optional value for the PHP namespace mapping is Ice\None. The symbol for the flattened mapping remains Ice_Unset, but since unset is a PHP keyword, we could not use Ice\Unset.

Python Changes

Added a new AMI mapping that returns Ice.Future. The Future class provides an API that is compatible with concurrent.futures.Future, with some additional Ice-specific methods. Programs can use the new mapping by adding the suffix Async to operation names, such as sayHelloAsync. The existing begin_/end_ mapping is still supported.
Changed the AMD mapping. AMD servant methods must no longer append the _async suffix to their names. Additionally, an AMD callback is no longer passed to a servant method. Now a servant method always uses the mapped name, and it can either return the results (for a synchronous implementation) or return an Ice.Future (for an asynchronous implementation).

With Python 3, a servant method can also be implemented as a coroutine. Ice will start the coroutine, and coroutines can await on Ice.Future objects. Note that because Ice is multithreaded, users who also want to use the asyncio package must make sure it's done in a thread-safe manner. To assist with this, the Ice.wrap_future function accepts an Ice.Future and returns an asyncio.Future.
Revised the Ice for Python packaging layout. Using the new Slice metadata directive python:pkgdir, all generated files are now placed in their respective package directories.
The Ice Communicator now implements the context manager protocol. This enables the code to initialize the communicator within a with statement. The communicator is destroyed automatically at the end of the with statement.
Added support for the Dispatcher facility. The dispatcher member of InitializationData can be set to a callable that Ice invokes when it needs to dispatch a servant invocation or an AMI callback. This facility is useful for example in UI applications where it's convenient to schedule Ice activity for execution on the main UI thread.
The threadHook member of InitializationData is now deprecated. We have added threadStart and threadStop members for consistency with the C++11 and Java mappings. A program should set these members to a callable, such as a lambda function.
The batchRequestInterceptor member of InitializationData can now be set to a callable. For backward compatibility, a program can also continue to supply an instance of the deprecated class Ice.BatchRequestInterceptor.
Renamed optional invocation context parameter to context for consistency with other language mappings (was _ctx in previous versions).
Fixed a bug where Ice.Application Ctrl-C handler was installed even if Ice.Application.NoSignalHandling was set.

Ruby Changes

Ice for Ruby is no longer supported on Windows.
Fix Application Ctrl-C handling to be compatible with Ruby 2.x signal handler restrictions.
Fixed a bug that prevented the data members of IceSSL::ConnectionInfo from being defined correctly.

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CHANGELOG-3.7.md

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CHANGELOG-3.7.md

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