Apache Camel 4.11 has just been released.
This release introduces a set of new features and noticeable improvements that we will cover in this blog post.
Camel Core
The component verifier extension has been deprecated. This functionality has not been in use for many years, and we will start to deprecate more of these unused features in camel-core going forward.
Recipient List, Split and Multicast EIP
In parallel processing mode, you can also enable synchronous=true to force these EIPs to process the sub-tasks using the upper bounds of the thread-pool. If using synchronous=false then Camel will allow its reactive routing engine to use as many threads as possible, which may be available due to sub-tasks using other thread-pools such as CompletableFuture.runAsync or others.
Setting synchronous=true is the same behavior as in Camel 2 which did not have the reactive routing engine.
Camel JBang
Camel JBang now supports running on Eclipse OpenJ9 Java platforms.
Added camel edit command to be able to edit source files using a terminal editor (nano).
Fixed Camel JBang to be able to run on Windows with Quarkus and Spring Boot runtimes.
The export command has been further hardened to better export using beans that may trigger initialization code that would not work during export phase.
Camel SQL
The camel-sql component now supports for non-named SQL queries to use Map message body, where the values of the Map is used as SQL parameters (in the order they are in the Map, so use LinkedHashMap).
We have also significantly improved the performance when using SQL batch insert or updates.
Camel Telemetry
In this version we’re introducing a new abstract component for distributed telemetry. The camel-telemetry component and its concrete implementations (camel-telemetrydev, camel-opentelemetry2) will eventually replace camel-tracing components. The rationale is a new design to move all generic features of the telemetry components into its abstract definition and make it easier to maintain the implementation in the long term.
As the new component provide a slight different telemetry traces and spans, we’ve decided to develop it while keeping the older implementation as well. However, you’re invited already to try this out.
Camel Observability Services
The observability services component is now using the camel-opentelemetry2 instead of camel-opentelemetry. This is just a FYI, nothing is expected to be done on the user side.
Camel Test
Added @StubEndpoints annotation to make it easy to stub a given component, such as kafka, so you can easily write unit tests without having to use Kafka but let it be stubbed by Camel and act as an internal message queue (ala camel-seda).
We have also made it easier to turn off auto-starting specific routes, using the new AutoStartupExcludePattern option (or @@AutoStartupExclude annotation). This allows to exclude routes (by pattern) so you can write unit tests and fully control which routes are included and started in the tests.
Camel Spring Boot
The camel-spring-boot is upgraded to latest Spring Boot 3.4.4 release.
Platform HTTP Spring Security integration
The Async Camel Spring Boot Platform HTTP now supports DelegatingSecurityContextAsyncTaskExecutor and follows Spring Boot best practices for security context propagation. This enhancement allows security-related information, such as the Principal, to be properly maintained across asynchronous operations. Similar to Spring Boot @Async methods, to propagate security related information, users can just configure a DelegatingSecurityContextAsyncTaskExecutor Bean.
Miscellaneous
Upgraded many third-party dependencies to the latest releases at the time of release.
The camel-bean component has been improved to better support invoking methods with varargs parameters.
The file based components (camel-file, camel-ftp, camel-azure-files, and camel-smb) now better support dynamic polling using poll or pollEnrich EIPs with dynamic computed endpoint, such as fileName by using PollDynamicAware that is specially optimized for these use-cases.
The camel-smb component now also has the autoCreate option to let Camel automatically create a non-existing starting directory.
The camel-http component has more improvements in regards to OAuth2 support.
The camel-micrometer component has a new Gauge which exposes information about the runtime running the Camel application:
# TYPE app_info gauge
app_info{camel_context="camel-1",camel_runtime_provider="Spring-Boot",camel_runtime_version="3.4.3",camel_version="4.10.2"} 1
In camel-kafka we added the option topicMustExists to tell Camel to check whether a given topic exists on startup. This can be used to ensure Camel will only consume from existing topics, and otherwise fail if an expected topic does not exists in the broker.
Added list and map functions to simple language so you can more easily create list/map objects.
The camel-bom Maven BOM no longer includes a huge google-bom that could cause builds to be much slower.
New Components
We have added a few new components:
camel-dfdl- Transforms fixed format data such as EDI message from/to XML using a Data Format Description Language (DFDL).ibm-secrets-manager- Manage secrets in IBM Secrets Manager Servicecamel-oauth- Camel OAuth (work in progress)camel-opentelemetry2- Implementation of Camel OpenTelemetry based on the Camel Telemetry speccamel-telemetry- Distributed telemetry common interfacescamel-telemetry-dev- Basic implementation of Camel Telemetry useful for development purposes
Upgrading
Make sure to read the upgrade guide if you are upgrading from a previous Camel version.
If you are upgrading from, for example, 4.4 to 4.8, then make sure to follow the upgrade guides for each release in-between, i.e. 4.4 -> 4.5, 4.5 -> 4.6, and so forth.
The Camel Upgrade Recipes tool can also be used to automate upgrading. See more at: https://github.com/apache/camel-upgrade-recipes
Release Notes
You can find additional information about this release in the list of resolved JIRA tickets:
Roadmap
The following 4.12 release is planned for July 2025.