rama-0.3.0-alpha.4

[GlenDC]

This will be the last alpha release of rama 0.3.0. Besides some minor stuff there are still
two big features that we want to have done before shipping 0.3.0:

• rama-grpc: Grpc support for rama (add GRPC support as rama-grpc #488; funded by one of our commercial partners);
• impl a new Uri implementation in rama-net (implement protocol indepdendent IRI/URI support in rama-net #724) and make use of that:
  • as the uri for Request, improving that further;
  • replace RequestContext and TransportContext with scoped traits to get
    get info such as path and Uri from input in a stateless simplified way (implement protocol indepdendent IRI/URI support in rama-net #724)

These changes will also unlock some other minor improvements that we still plan to do.
You can check https://github.com/plabayo/rama/milestone/2 for the full 0.3 milestone,
Note that not everything in that list will be done prior to 0.3. Some of it we will probably
drop or move to another milestone.

Once the Uri, Grpc and some other minor improvements and feature work (e.g. multi-part support)
is done we will start with release candidates (rc) for rama.
We plan to do 1 or 2 of these with a final 0.3 release at the end of January (2026).

Once we released rama 0.3 we plan to start doing a regular release train of six weeks.
The idea is to release whatever is in main, which will be a patch- or major release depending if we have
breaking changes or not.

Community

Thank you to the contributors of this release: Glen De Cauwsemaecker [glen@plabayo.tech], Abdelkader Boudih [terminale@gmail.com], Nicolas Trippar [ntrippar@gmail.com], M-Kusumgar [98405247+M-Kusumgar@users.noreply.github.com], Brecht Stamper [stamper.brecht@gmail.com], Ali Tariq [raja.ali945@gmail.com], Camille Louédoc-Eyriès [clouedoc@icloud.com], sim-hash [84858164+sim-hash@users.noreply.github.com], Irfan - ئىرفان [irfanabliz914@gmail.com], Yukun Wang [airycanon@airycanon.me], hafihaf123 [misobuchta@gmail.com], Aydan Pirani [aydanpirani@gmail.com], Kenny Lau [72945813+lauk20@users.noreply.github.com], and MeerKatDev [lcampobasso@gmail.com]. We also want to extend our thanks to all the individuals in the wider ecosystem and the maintainers of the third-party crates that make this work possible.

Huge shoutout to Brecht Stamper [stamper.brecht@gmail.com] for stepping up to help maintain rama and driving major changes this release. His work was instrumental in the service and state API redesign, ACME support, TLS improvements, and Pooled Connections, among many other contributions.

Major Architectural Refactor

Removal of Context

In a fundamental shift for the 0.3 milestone, the centralized Context type has been removed in favor of a decentralized, extension-based architecture. This aligns Rama more closely with standard Rust middleware patterns and improves flexibility for complex service stacks.

• Context Type Removal: The Context object is no longer passed through services. Data, state, and executors are now managed via Extensions attached directly to the Request, Response, or Connection (Move executor to extensions #711, Issue 462/revisit service api (core) design in 0.3 milestone#4 removing context #714).
• Forked HTTP Modules: Integrated and forked parts of the http crate's request/response modules into Rama to provide native support for our specific Extension requirements and performance optimizations (Issue 692/integrate / fork http crate into rama#partially #696).
• Extensions-First Design: Extensions are now supported throughout rama-http-core for both HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 (Issue 462/revisit service api (core) design in 0.3 milestone#2 moving extensions #706, extensions inside rama-http-core #727).
• State Migration: State management has moved from Context to Extensions. New utilities like AddInputExtensionLayer, AddOutputExtensionLayer and IntoEndpointServiceWithState
  have been introduced to handle state injection (Issue 462/revisit service api (core) design in 0.3 milestone# removing state from context #685, Issue 462/revisit service api (core) design in 0.3 milestone#4 state for http endpoints #720).

During this process we played at some point with the concept of Parent Extensions (#715).
We have however simplified, the concept even further and at this point it is
a list of extensions which can be forked.

We are not yet 100% finished with this design and there will probably be some more minor changes
prior to the actual release of rama 0.3. The biggest design changes around these concepts
are however behind our back.

Input/Output

the Service trait now uses the type parameters:

• Input, instead of Request;
• Output, instead of Response;

This aligns much better with Rama's future but even for its present.
For example service and layers also operate on the transport and tls layers,
where the parameter types Request and Response make no sense.

Added

• CLI & Tooling:
  • Major Refactor: The rama-cli now features a restructured command hierarchy with send (unified HTTP/WS client), serve, and probe subcommands (Patch/rama cli refactor #732).
  • Stunnel Support: Added a stunnel-like feature to rama-cli to support TLS tunneling use cases (support stunnel-like use cases in rama-cli as well as document it #453, Support stunnel-like use cases in rama-cli #629).
  • Export to curl: Support for exporting HTTP requests to curl commands directly from the CLI or via service layers (add curl module to rama-http-types #509, add curl export support (#509) #699).
  • HAR Support: Introduced an HTTP Archive (HAR) recorder layer to capture and export traffic for debugging (support HAR exporter (http) layer in rama #357, basic har layer #646, support HAR exporter (http) layer in rama #694).
  • Windows Signing: CLI releases for Windows are now officially signed via SignPath.io.
  • New CLI Features: Added probe tcp command and support for the --resolve flag in the send command to override DNS for specific domains.
• Networking & Protocols:
  • Discard Protocol: Implemented RFC 863 Discard service for both TCP and UDP (Implement octet stream response #718).
  • Fingerprinting: Added Akamai HTTP/2 passive fingerprinting support, integrated into the fingerprinting and echo services (support akamai h2 passive fingerprint and expose in echo + fp services #517, Issue 517/support akamai h2 passive fingerprint #719).
  • Post-Quantum Crypto: Re-integrated PQ encryption support in boring (e.g., X25519MLKEM768) (Rama using boring tls is not using X25519MLKEM768 when emulating Tls Profile #721, upgrade rama-boring boring C++ lib deps + re-integrate PQ encryption #722).
  • OTLP Integration: Added OTLP and subscriber support directly into the core rama crate to reduce external dependency overhead.
  • Built-in overwrite of span and trace logic to make it compatible with OTLP;
• HTTP Features:
  • New Typed Headers: Support for X-Robots-Tag (support X-Robots-Tag as a typed http header XRobotsTag #382, support X-Robots-Tag as a typed http header #707), X-Clacks-Overhead (support X-Clacks-Overhead (response) http header #620, [620] - add X-Clacks-Overhead header support #734), DNT (Do Not Track), and Sec-GPC.
  • Data Streaming: Added support for NDJSON (Newline Delimited JSON) and improved JSON body streaming (add ndjson support #703, improve json body stream #704).
  • Octet-stream: Implemented octet-stream response support (Implement octet stream response #718).
  • HSTS: Added an HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) example and e2e tests (#00fff66).
  • Redirects: Added redirect/rewrite/forward HTTP services and layers (advanced redirect/rewrite/forward http svc/layer #717).
• TLS & ACME:
  • DNS Challenges: Support for DNS-01 challenges in rama-acme and TXT record lookups in rama-dns.
  • Wildcard Support: Added support for wildcard domains in rama-net and better wildcard handling in the DynamicIssuer.
  • ACME Certs: Support for downloading ACME certificates as raw PEM bytes.

Changed

• API Naming Conventions:
  • Applied consistent prefixes where it helps in meaning (no need to apply these everywhere, but where it otherwise is not clear it probably is advised: try_ (fallible), maybe_ (optional), set_ (&mut self) and with_ (self). These can also be combined for example for a fallible setter: try_set. For Setters we also have a macro to easily define these which we also started to use and apply more (generate_set_and_with);
  • Renamed AddExtension to AddInputExtension and introduced AddOutputExtension for clearer lifecycle management (Issue 756/Rename GetExtension to GetInputExtension and create GetOutputExtension #759, Issue 756/Rename AddExtension to AddInputExtension and add AddOutputExtension #761).
• Internal Improvements:
  • Performance: Replaced standard HashMap/HashSet with faster ahash versions (replace std hashmap/hashet with faster version from ahash #709).
  • Stream Libs: Replaced async-stream with asynk-strim for better performance and DX.
  • Memory Management: Updated internal usage of SmallVec and SmolStr to reduce allocations across the workspace.
    • These dependencies are also re-exported under rama-utils
  • Upstream Sync: Massive sync with upstream forks including hyper, h2 (1xx informational responses support), tungstenite, and tower-http.
• MSRV: Bumped Rust Minimum Supported Rust Version to 1.91.
• EasyWebClient: Refactored to be more explicit with connector_builder and support for jit_layers.

Fixed

• HTTP/2: Fixed a critical bug in H2 emulation regarding window update replay and early frame replay (UA emulation causes connection error (possibly HTTP/2–related) #772).
• Compression:
  • Fixed gzip decompression issues with empty bodies combined with trailers (synced with tower-http patch).
  • Also provide a StreamCompression version which is recommended to use for compression of streaming
    endpoints such as SSE or chunked encoding;
• Cookies: Implemented RFC 6265 compliance when downgrading requests from HTTP/2+ to HTTP/1.x by merging multiple Cookie headers (HTTP/2 → HTTP/1.1 upstream conversion sends multiple Cookie headers (instead of a single merged header), causing request failures #768, Adapt HTTP/2/3 requests to HTTP/1.x by merging multiple Cookie headers (RFC 6265 5.4) #770).

Removed

• Request Inspectors: Removed the RequestInspector concept; all inspection is now handled via standard services/layers (Remove request inspectors #750).
• UDP Wrapper: Removed the custom UdpSocket wrapper in favor of re-exporting tokio::net::UdpSocket.
• Extension Removal: Extensions no longer support remove(), ensuring a predictable "breadcrumb" trace of information (Issue 462/revisit service api (core) design in 0.3 milestone#3 no remove from extensions #715).
• ErrorWithExitCode: Removed as it was deemed unreliable for complex error propagation.

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This discussion was created from the release rama-0.3.0-alpha.4.