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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

starburst 0.3.9 (2026-07-22)

CRAN release: 2026-07-22

Cost & cleanup fixes (important)

  • The max_hourly_cost guard now works on the EC2 backend (the default). Previously estimate_cost() returned per_hour for Fargate but total_per_hour for EC2, and the guard read per_hour — which is NULL on EC2 — so the cost ceiling was silently never enforced on the default backend. estimate_cost() now returns a normalized hourly_rate for every backend, and the guard, cost display, and starburst_map()/starburst_cluster() all use it.
  • cost_alert_threshold is now enforced — it warns when a plan’s estimated hourly rate exceeds it (previously it was stored but never read).
  • starburst_config(auto_cleanup_s3 = …) now actually controls S3 cleanup. The runtime read a different key (getOption("starburst.cleanup_s3")) and ignored the stored setting; cleanup now resolves option → auto_cleanup_s3 config → default TRUE.
  • starburst_map()/starburst_cluster() cost estimates match the backend used — they forward launch_type/instance_type/use_spot, so an EC2 job no longer reports a Fargate price.
  • Cost estimates now use live AWS pricing (Pricing API for On-Demand, EC2 spot-price history for Spot), cached per session with a built-in static-rate fallback when offline. Reported costs are estimates (measured runtime × current rate), not AWS billing figures; docs reworded accordingly.

New features

  • starburst_setup() now provisions the default EC2 capacity provider (for c7g.xlarge) so the default EC2 backend works out of the box — previously the first starburst_map()/plan(starburst) run failed because no capacity provider existed. It is created at DesiredCapacity = 0 (no billable instances launch during setup). Pass setup_ec2 = FALSE to skip (Fargate-only users). (#37)
  • Custom EC2 instance types are now provisioned automatically on first use. Selecting a non-default instance_type (e.g. c8a.xlarge) previously failed with an opaque “AutoScalingGroup not found” because only the default was provisioned. Now the capacity provider/ASG is created on demand at first launch (a one-time ~1–2 min step; no instances launched by provisioning), or on failure you get the exact starburst_setup_ec2(instance_types = "…") command to run.

Behavior changes

  • Detached session$collect() now returns an entry for every terminal task, including failures. A failed task comes back as a structured failure (list(error = TRUE, message = …, task_id = …)) alongside successful results, instead of being silently omitted — matching the documented contract.
  • Clarified session$cleanup(): by default it stops workers and marks the session terminated but preserves S3 objects; pass force = TRUE to also delete them. (Behavior unchanged; the docs were wrong and are now correct.)

Breaking changes

  • Removed the platform argument from starburst_map() and starburst_cluster(). It was ignored (architecture is inferred from instance_type: Graviton *g.* → ARM64, else x86_64), and its "X86_64" default even contradicted the ARM64 c7g.xlarge default. Drop it from calls; the backend picks the architecture from instance_type. (platform remains on starburst_estimate(), where it is functional.)
  • Renamed starburst_config(max_cost_per_job=) to max_hourly_cost. The limit was always enforced as an hourly rate (USD/hour), not a total-job cap; the new name matches the behavior. Update any starburst_config(max_cost_per_job = ...) calls to max_hourly_cost = ....

Bug fixes

  • starburst_map() and starburst_cluster() now accept launch_type, instance_type, and use_spot and forward them to the backend. Previously these functions had no backend arguments, so a call like starburst_map(x, f, launch_type = "FARGATE") silently passed launch_type to the mapped function .f (typically an “unused argument” error) instead of switching the backend — contradicting the 0.3.7 migration note. Backend selection now works uniformly across plan(starburst), starburst_map(), starburst_cluster(), and starburst_session().
  • Fixed broken/misleading examples: the README detached-session example used a nonexistent detached = TRUE argument; S3-read examples used base read.csv()/ readRDS(url()) which cannot read s3://; and the API rate-limit example aggregated to 10× its stated global limit across workers.
  • Public base images are now built multi-arch (amd64 + arm64). They were published amd64-only, so use_public_base = TRUE failed the multi-arch environment build with “no match for platform in manifest” for arm64. The build-base-images workflow now builds both architectures (matching the env build), so the public base path works. (#39)

Documentation

  • Consistency sweep addressing an external documentation review: EC2 is now consistently presented as the default/recommended backend with Fargate as the optional alternative; the README and example console output match the current engine (ASCII status markers, one task per input element — no chunking step); the Getting Started tutorial leads with starburst_map(); a grouped reference index and an architecture diagram were added; and starburst_config() keys are now catalogued.
  • Trimmed the Getting Started tutorial: the inline Monte Carlo / bootstrap / genomics snippets (which showed unbatched future_map(1:10000, …) and hand-written speedup claims) now link to the canonical, measured example articles and the Workload Shapes / Performance guides. The doc-consistency guard (tools/check-docs.R) now also flags naive future_map()/future_lapply() big-count calls, not just starburst_map().
  • Removed the historical ROADMAP.md (a pre-1.0, Fargate-first implementation plan that also carried a stale “MIT” license note); the README Roadmap section is the single source of truth.

starburst 0.3.8 (2026-03-06)

CRAN release: 2026-03-19

Reliability & CRAN readiness

Bug fixes

  • Worker script: Removed an invalid timeout parameter from the paws client configuration that could cause workers to fail on startup.
  • Environment sync: ensure_environment() now walks up the directory tree to find the package-root renv.lock when invoked from a subdirectory (e.g. during tests), and the environment image hash is computed consistently between build and lookup, so cached worker images are reused correctly.
  • Hardened safe_system() usage and resolved qs2 serialization edge cases surfaced by integration tests.

Documentation & packaging

  • All \donttest{} examples are guarded with starburst_is_configured() so they are safe to run without AWS credentials.
  • Pre-built vignettes shipped in inst/doc/ and assorted R CMD check / CRAN incoming-feasibility fixes. Package accepted on CRAN.

starburst 0.3.7 (2026-02-17)

Default backend is now EC2

  • BREAKING CHANGE: the default launch_type changed from FARGATE to EC2, with spot instances enabled by default (use_spot = TRUE, instance_type = "c7g.xlarge"). EC2 avoids Fargate cold starts, is 50–90% cheaper with spot, and supports warm pools and a wider range of instance types. Fargate remains fully supported — pass launch_type = "FARGATE" to plan(starburst, ...), starburst_map(), starburst_cluster(), or starburst_session() to keep the previous behavior.
  • Completed the EC2 backend implementation with working end-to-end execution (warm pools, capacity providers, spot support).

Migration

  • If you relied on the Fargate default, add launch_type = "FARGATE" to your plan()/starburst_*() call. No other changes are required; the task API is unchanged across backends.

starburst 0.3.6 (2026-02-16)

AWS Integration Testing & Documentation

Major milestone: Complete AWS integration testing infrastructure and documentation site launch.

New Features

  • Comprehensive AWS Integration Testing (#4b36310)
    • GitHub Actions workflow for automated AWS testing
    • Local test runner script (run-aws-tests.sh)
    • Multiple test suites: quick, detached-sessions, integration-examples, ec2, cleanup
    • OIDC authentication for secure CI/CD
    • Comprehensive TESTING.md documentation
    • Weekly scheduled testing runs
  • Documentation Site (https://starburst.ing)
    • Custom domain with HTTPS enabled
    • Full pkgdown site with all 29+ exported functions
    • 12 vignettes including security and troubleshooting guides
    • Example scripts and runnable code

Bug Fixes

  • Test Suite
    • Fixed missing readLines() stubs in environment tests (#6514229)
    • Fixed missing get_starburst_config() stub in Docker tests (#dad7124)
    • Fixed environment variable handling in integration tests (#78dbc2c)
    • Improved AWS credential handling in test script (#0e916f2)
  • CI/CD
    • Removed docs/ directory conflict in pkgdown workflow (#bc97dca)
    • Complete pkgdown configuration for all functions and vignettes (#7a562f3)
    • Removed non-existent function from pkgdown config (#4fe5d97)

Test Results

  • Unit Tests: 202 passing, 0 failures
  • Integration Tests: 34 ready to run (local + CI)
  • CI Status: All checks passing on 5 platforms (Ubuntu, Windows, macOS)

Documentation

Full documentation now available at starburst.ing

starburst 0.3.5 (2026-02-15)

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Changes

  • Docker Image Versioning (#707ee78)
    • Include package version in Docker image hash
    • Ensures environment rebuilds when package version changes
    • Prevents stale Docker images with old code
  • Serialization Update (#cbfad21)
    • Changed worker scripts from qs to qs2 package
    • Improved compatibility and performance
    • Consistent with main package dependencies

Assessment

Minor version bump with critical bug fixes for Docker caching and serialization consistency.

starburst 0.3.4 (2026-02-14)

Code Quality Fix

Changes

  • Fixed vapply calls (#b96ace1)
    • Added missing FUN.VALUE parameters to all vapply() calls
    • Ensures type safety in vectorized operations
    • Follows R best practices for safe functional programming

Assessment

Quick patch release addressing R CMD check warnings about unsafe vapply usage.

starburst 0.3.3 (2026-02-13)

Zero Lints - Idiomatic R Code Quality

Goal: Achieve zero linting warnings while maintaining idiomatic R code style.

Changes

  • Fixed trivial lint issues (#11)
    • Fixed infix spacing: collapse= → collapse =
    • Split long lines in R/ec2-pool.R and R/plan-starburst.R
    • 3 quick wins for cleaner code
  • Configured lintr for R best practices
    • Explicit return() statements (clarity over implicit)
    • Descriptive variable names (clarity over brevity)
    • Suppressed false positives for internal functions
    • Accepted minor indentation variations (cosmetic only)

Quality Metrics

Lint Progression: - v0.3.0: 325 total lints - v0.3.1: 198 lints (-39%) - v0.3.2: 113 lints in R/ code (-65% from v0.3.1) - v0.3.3: 0 lints in R/ code ✅ (-100%)

Philosophy: This release establishes lintr configuration that prioritizes: 1. Code clarity over terseness 2. Explicit over implicit 3. Meaningful names over short names 4. R idioms over arbitrary style rules

Assessment

The package now has zero linting warnings while maintaining: - Explicit return statements (R best practice) - Descriptive variable names (self-documenting code) - Standard R indentation patterns - Internal function patterns recognized by R

Result: Clean, idiomatic R code with zero false-positive lint warnings.

starburst 0.3.2 (2026-02-13)

Idiomatic R Code - Go-Level Quality

Goal: Achieve Go-level code quality standards for R - clean, consistent, idiomatic.

Changes

  • Removed unused variables (#10)
    • Cleaned up 5 truly unused assignments
    • Fixed cat_warning → cat_warn typo
    • Simplified code by removing unnecessary intermediate variables
  • Code style improvements
    • Additional trailing whitespace cleanup
    • Improved code readability
    • More idiomatic R patterns

Quality Metrics

Lint Reduction Progress: - v0.3.0: 325 lints - v0.3.1: 198 lints (-39%) - v0.3.2: 195 lints (-40% total, -2% this release)

R/ Package Code Only (excluding examples/vignettes): - 113 lints (down from ~200+) - Breakdown: - 46 indentation (cosmetic, consistent style) - 34 object_usage (mostly false positives - internal functions) - 27 return (style preference - explicit vs implicit returns) - 3 object_length (descriptive variable names) - 2 line_length (complex expressions) - 1 infix_spaces (formatting)

Assessment

The remaining lints are: 1. Style preferences (indentation, returns) - subjective, not bugs 2. False positives (object_usage) - lintr doesn’t recognize internal functions 3. Descriptive names (object_length) - clarity over brevity

Code quality achieved: The package now meets high standards for production R code. Remaining lints are acceptable trade-offs for code clarity and maintainability.

Next Steps (Optional)

For absolute zero-lint perfection (0.3.3 if desired): - Manual indentation review (46 instances) - Add lintr suppressions for false positives - Shorten some variable names

starburst 0.3.1 (2026-02-12)

Code Quality Improvements

Complete: All 3 issues from v0.3.1 milestone (#18, #19, #20)

Changes

  • Replaced all emojis with ASCII equivalents (#19)
    • ✓ → [OK] (success messages)
    • ⚠ → [WARNING] (warning messages)
    • 💡 → [TIP] (recommendations)
    • 📖 → [INFO] (documentation links)
    • 🚀 → [Starting] (initialization messages)
    • 🧹 → [Cleaning] (cleanup messages)
    • ✗ → [ERROR] (error messages)
    • 14 files updated, better compatibility with older systems
  • Applied goodpractice suggestions (#20)
    • Replaced all sapply() with vapply() for type safety (10 instances in R/)
    • More predictable return types
    • Prevents unexpected list returns
    • Better error handling for edge cases
  • Fixed lintr warnings (#18)
    • Removed 127 trailing whitespace instances
    • Down from 325 to 198 remaining lints (39% improvement)
    • Remaining lints are cosmetic (indentation, style preferences)

Impact

  • No functional changes
  • Better code readability
  • Improved compatibility
  • More robust type safety

Remaining Lints (198)

Acceptable cosmetic issues for future polish: - 85 indentation inconsistencies - 49 unused variable warnings - 29 return() style preferences - 15 seq_len() suggestions (in examples/vignettes) - 20 other minor style issues

starburst 0.3.0 (2026-02-12)

🎉 Production-Ready Release

staRburst is now enterprise-grade and ready for production deployment! This release focuses on security hardening, operational excellence, and comprehensive documentation.

Major Features

  • Complete resource cleanup - session$cleanup() now fully implemented
    • Stops all running ECS tasks when session ends
    • Deletes S3 session files with force = TRUE option
    • Tracks ECS task ARNs in session manifest for reliable cleanup
    • Verification step ensures all resources are properly released
    • Prevents orphaned workers and runaway costs
  • Detached session mode - Long-running jobs that persist after R session ends
    • Create sessions with starburst_session()
    • Submit tasks and disconnect: session$submit(expr)
    • Reattach later with starburst_session_attach(session_id)
    • Check progress anytime: session$status()
    • Workers stay running until absolute timeout (default 24h)
  • Comprehensive troubleshooting guide - 15+ common issues documented
    • Accessing CloudWatch Logs (console and CLI)
    • Tasks stuck in pending (quota, IAM, network)
    • Permission errors (ECS, S3, ECR)
    • High costs and runaway workers
    • Package installation failures
    • Each issue includes symptoms, diagnosis, solutions, and prevention
  • Security best practices guide - Enterprise security documentation
    • Credential management (IAM roles, profiles, STS)
    • S3 bucket security (encryption, versioning, policies)
    • Network isolation (VPCs, security groups, endpoints)
    • Cost controls and budget alerts
    • Audit logging (CloudTrail, CloudWatch)
    • Compliance considerations (HIPAA, GDPR)

Security Improvements

  • Command injection prevention - Replaced unsafe system() calls
    • New safe_system() wrapper using processx::run()
    • Command whitelist validation
    • Automatic argument escaping (no shell expansion)
    • Prevents code execution via Docker/AWS CLI parameters
    • 25 new security regression tests
  • Worker cost controls - Enforced maximum worker limits
    • Hard limit of 500 workers per cluster (prevents accidental runaway costs)
    • Validation at plan() time with helpful error messages
    • Clear guidance on requesting quota increases if needed
    • Estimated cost validation before worker launch
  • Secure ECR authentication - Fixed credential exposure vulnerability
    • ECR password no longer exposed in process listings
    • Uses stdin for Docker login (not command line arguments)
    • Credentials never visible in ps aux output
    • Temporary files cleaned up immediately after use

Reliability Improvements

  • Atomic S3 manifest updates - Prevents race conditions
    • ETag-based optimistic locking for concurrent updates
    • Automatic retry with exponential backoff on conflicts
    • Ensures no manifest updates are lost when multiple workers update simultaneously
    • Critical for detached sessions with many workers
  • Comprehensive retry logic - Handles transient AWS failures gracefully
    • Exponential backoff with jitter for all AWS operations
    • Retries throttling, timeouts, 5xx errors automatically
    • Configurable retry limits (default 3 attempts)
    • Specialized retry wrappers: with_s3_retry(), with_ecs_retry(), with_ecr_retry()
    • Reduces job failures from temporary AWS service issues
  • Improved error messages - Context, solutions, and documentation links

New Functions & API

  • starburst_session() - Create detached session for long-running jobs
  • starburst_session_attach() - Reattach to existing session
  • starburst_session_list() - List all active sessions
  • session$submit() - Submit tasks to detached session
  • session$status() - Check session progress and task states
  • session$collect() - Retrieve completed results
  • session$cleanup() - Stop workers and clean up resources

Infrastructure

  • New R modules:
    • R/aws-retry.R - Centralized retry logic (167 lines)
    • R/errors.R - Rich error message helpers (286 lines)
    • R/session-api.R - Detached session API (600+ lines)
    • R/session-backend.R - Session backend initialization (332 lines)
    • R/session-state.R - S3 state management with atomic updates (487 lines)
  • New vignettes:
    • vignettes/troubleshooting.Rmd - 15+ common issues (~15KB)
    • vignettes/security.Rmd - 10+ security topics (~17KB)
  • Development infrastructure:
    • CLAUDE.md - Comprehensive AI assistant development guide
    • GitHub issues/milestones for project tracking
    • 30 standardized labels for issue classification

Testing

  • 39 new tests - Comprehensive test coverage for production features
    • 25 security tests (command injection prevention, validation)
    • 14 cleanup tests (ECS task stopping, S3 deletion)
    • All tests passing (179 total tests now)
    • AWS integration tested against real infrastructure
  • Package quality improvements
    • Documentation regenerated with no warnings
    • .Rbuildignore updated to exclude development files
    • Internal .Rd files properly namespaced
    • Top-level directory cleaned up (internal docs moved to docs/)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed: Worker error handling now catches and reports task failures (#2)
  • Fixed: Manifest race condition causing concurrent update conflicts
  • Fixed: S3 timeout errors now retried automatically
  • Fixed: ECR password exposure in Docker login command
  • Fixed: Missing cleanup implementation (was just printing message)
  • Fixed: Documentation warnings for internal modules

Breaking Changes

  • session$cleanup() signature changed: now accepts stop_workers and force parameters
  • Default behavior: cleanup stops workers but preserves S3 files (use force=TRUE to delete)

Performance

  • No performance regressions
  • Retry logic adds minimal overhead (only on failures)
  • Atomic updates have negligible latency impact (<50ms)

Documentation

  • 2 new comprehensive vignettes (~32KB of documentation)
  • All errors now link to troubleshooting guide
  • Security guide covers 10+ enterprise security topics
  • Examples added for all new API functions

Production Readiness

✅ Command injection prevention ✅ Worker cost controls (max 500) ✅ Complete resource cleanup ✅ Race condition prevention ✅ Transient failure handling ✅ Comprehensive documentation ✅ Professional error messages ✅ 179 passing tests

This release makes staRburst suitable for enterprise production deployments.

Known Issues (to be addressed in 0.3.1)

  • Code style: 325 lintr warnings (mostly indentation, trailing whitespace)
    • Does not affect functionality
    • Will be cleaned up in 0.3.1
  • Non-ASCII characters: Emojis in user-facing messages (✓, ⚠, 💡, etc.)
    • Modern R handles UTF-8 correctly
    • May cause warnings on older systems
    • Can be replaced with ASCII equivalents if needed
  • Best practices: goodpractice suggests improvements
    • Replace sapply() with vapply() (30+ instances)
    • Replace 1:length() with seq_len() (14+ instances)
    • These are minor optimizations, not bugs

Static Analysis & Security

  • Security scanning: Snyk enabled for dependency vulnerabilities
  • Static analysis: lintr and goodpractice configured
  • .lintr configuration: Ignores examples/, focuses on package code
  • All critical security issues from audit resolved (command injection, credential exposure, etc.)

starburst 0.2.0 (2026-02-04)

Major Features

  • Multi-stage base image system for dramatically faster builds
    • Base images contain system dependencies + core R packages
    • Project images only install project-specific packages
    • Reduces typical build times from 20 min to 3-5 min
    • One-time base build per R version, reused across all projects
  • Complete Docker dependency support
    • Added 15 system packages for comprehensive R package compilation
    • Supports graphics packages (ragg, systemfonts, textshaping)
    • Supports data packages (httpuv, readr, haven)
    • All common CRAN packages now compile successfully
  • Fixed globals serialization (#1)
    • Proper function closure capture for remote execution
    • Converts plain lists to globals::Globals objects
    • Ensures variables are correctly serialized to workers

Performance Improvements

  • ECR image caching validated with 40x speedup
    • First run: ~42 min (one-time Docker build)
    • Subsequent runs: ~1 min (cached image from ECR)
    • No rebuild needed when renv.lock unchanged
  • Build time optimizations
    • Dev environment (112 packages): 20 min → 6-8 min
    • Production (30 packages): 8-10 min → 3-5 min
    • Minimal projects: 3-5 min → 1-2 min

New Functions

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed globals serialization causing empty results from workers
  • Added missing system dependencies for package compilation
  • Resolved Docker build failures for graphics packages

Infrastructure

  • New inst/templates/Dockerfile.base for base image builds
  • Simplified inst/templates/Dockerfile.template (42 → 19 lines)
  • Base images tagged by R version: base-{R.VERSION}

Known Limitations

  • No GPU support (planned for v1.0)
  • No Spot instance support (planned for v1.0)
  • Limited to Fargate resources (16 vCPU, 120GB RAM max)
  • Public base images not yet available (coming in 0.3.0)

starburst 0.1.0 (2026-02-03)

Initial Release

  • Initial development version
  • Core features:
    • future backend for AWS Fargate
    • Automatic environment synchronization with renv
    • Wave-based quota management
    • Cost estimation and tracking
    • One-time setup wizard
    • Transparent quota handling with automatic increase requests