Add a link to the 'native transports' page
Fix NPE while decoding authority section of a DNS response

Motivation:

NullPointerException is raised when a DNS response conrains a resource
record whose NAME is empty, which is the case for the authority section.

Modification:

Allow an empty name for DnsEntry. Only disallow an empty name for
DnsQuestion.

Result:

Fixes #2686
Raise a meaningful exception instead of NPE

Motivation:

When decoding the NAME field in a DNS Resource Record, DnsResponseDecoder
can raise a NullPointerException if the NAME field contains a loop.

Modification:

Instead of raising an NPE, raise CorruptedFrameException so that the
exception itself has meaning.

Result:

Less confusing when a malformed DNS RR is received
Fixing bug in HTTP/2 ping handling.

Motivation:

The current HTTP/2 ping handling replies with an ack using the same
buffer as the received ping. It doesn't call retain(), however, which
causes a ReferenceCountException since the buffer ends up getting
released twice (once by the write and once by the decoder).

Modifications:

Modified AbstractHttp2ConnectionHandler to retain() the buffer. Added a
ping to Http2ConnectionRoundtripTest.stressTest() to verify the problem
and that this fixes it.

Result:

Ping should no longer cause an exception.
Simplify Bzip2 tests

Motivation:

Sometimes we have a 'build time out' error because tests for bzip2 codec take a long time.

Modifications:

Removed cycles from Bzip2EncoderTest.testCompression(byte[]) and Bzip2DecoderTest.testDecompression(byte[]).

Result:

Reduced time to test the 'codec' package by 30 percent.
Reduce the default initial capacity of ChannelOutboundBuffer

Motivation:

ChannelOutboundBuffer is basically a circular array queue of its entry
objects.  Once an entry is created in the array, it is never nulled out
to reduce the allocation cost.

However, because it is a circular queue, the array almost always ends up
with as many entry instances as the size of the array, regardless of the
number of pending writes.

At worst case, a channel might have only 1 pending writes at maximum
while creating 32 entry objects, where 32 is the initial capacity of the
array.

Modifications:

- Reduce the initial capacity of the circular array queue to 4.
- Make the initial capacity of the circular array queue configurable

Result:

We spend 4 times less memory for entry objects under certain
circumstances.
Refactor integration tests of compression codecs

Motivation:

Duplicated code of integration tests for different compression codecs.

Modifications:

- Added abstract class IntegrationTest which contains common tests for any compression codec.
- Removed common tests from Bzip2IntegrationTest and LzfIntegrationTest.
- Implemented abstract methods of IntegrationTest in Bzip2IntegrationTest, LzfIntegrationTest and SnappyIntegrationTest.

Result:

Removed duplicated code of integration tests for compression codecs and simplified an addition of integration tests for new compression codecs.
Refactor Bzip2 tests

Motivation:

Complicated code of Bzip2 tests with some unnecessary actions.

Modifications:

- Reduce size of BYTES_LARGE array of random test data for Bzip2  tests.
- Removed unnecessary creations of EmbeddedChannel instances in Bzip2 tests.
- Simplified tests in Bzip2DecoderTest which expect exception.
- Removed unnecessary testStreamInitialization() from Bzip2EncoderTest.

Result:

Reduced time to test the 'codec' package by 7 percent, simplified code of Bzip2 tests.
Remove compressed flag from HTTP/2

Motivation:

There are still a few places in the HTTP/2 code that have the compressed
flag (from pre-draft 13). Need to remove this flag since it's no longer
used.

Modifications:

Various changes to remove the flag from the writing path.

Result:

No references to the compressed flag.
Use value types for class and type in DNS entries to make them immune to parameter order bugs

Motivation:

DNS class and type were represented as integers rather than an enum or a
similar dedicated value type.  This can be a potential source of a
parameter order bug which might be difficult to track down.

Modifications:

Add DnsClass and DnsType to replace integer parameters

Result:

Type safety and less error-proneness
Overall cleanup of codec-dns

Related issue: #2688

- DnsClass and DnsType
  - Make DnsClass and DnsType implement Comparable
  - Optimize the message generation of IllegalArgumentException,
    by pre-populating the list of the expected parameters
  - Move the static methods up
  - Relax the validation rule of DnsClass so that a user can define a
    CLASS which is not listed in the RFC 1035
  - valueOf(int) does not throw IllegalArgumentException anymore as long
    as the specified value is an unsigned short.
  - Rename create() and forName() to valueOf() so that they look like a
    real enum
  - Rename type() and clazz() to intValue() so that they conform to our
    naming convention
- Add missing null checks in DnsEntry
Fix a compilation error
Updated the ChannelGroup JavaDoc by removing b.releaseExternalResources();
[#2705] Call fireChannelReadComplete() if channelActive(...) decodes messages in ReplayingDecoder / ByteToMessageDecoder

Motivation:

In ReplayingDecoder / ByteToMessageDecoder channelInactive(...) method we try to decode a last time and fire all decoded messages throw the pipeline before call ctx.fireChannelInactive(...). To keep the correct order of events we also need to call ctx.fireChannelReadComplete() if we read anything.

Modifications:

- Channel channelInactive(...) to call ctx.fireChannelReadComplete() if something was decoded
- Move out.recycle() to finally block

Result:

Correct order of events.
Fix compile error
[#2662] Fix race in cancellation of TimerTasks which could let to NPE

Motivation:

Due some race-condition while handling canellation of TimerTasks it was possibleto corrupt the linked-list structure that is represent by HashedWheelBucket and so produce a NPE.

Modification:

Fix the problem by adding another MpscLinkedQueue which holds the cancellation tasks and process them on each tick. This allows to use no synchronization / locking at all while introduce a latency of max 1 tick before the TimerTask can be GC'ed.

Result:

No more NPE
Optimize native transport for gathering writes

Motivation:

While benchmarking the native transport with gathering writes I noticed that it is quite slow. This is due the fact that we need to do a lot of array copies to get the buffers into the iov array.

Modification:

Introduce a new class calles IovArray which allows to fill buffers directly in a iov array that can be passed over to JNI without any array copies. This gives a nice optimization in terms of speed when doing gathering writes.

Result:

Big performance improvement when doing gathering writes. See the included benchmark...

Before:
[nmaurer@xxx]~% wrk/wrk -H 'Host: localhost' -H 'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8' -H 'Connection: keep-alive' -d 120 -c 256 -t 16 --pipeline 256  http://xxx:8080/plaintext
Running 2m test @ http://xxx:8080/plaintext
  16 threads and 256 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency    23.44ms   16.37ms 259.57ms   91.77%
    Req/Sec   181.99k    31.69k  304.60k    78.12%
  346544071 requests in 2.00m, 46.48GB read
Requests/sec: 2887885.09
Transfer/sec:    396.59MB

With this change:
[nmaurer@xxx]~% wrk/wrk -H 'Host: localhost' -H 'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8' -H 'Connection: keep-alive' -d 120 -c 256 -t 16 --pipeline 256  http://xxx:8080/plaintext
Running 2m test @ http://xxx:8080/plaintext
  16 threads and 256 connections
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency    21.93ms   16.33ms 305.73ms   92.34%
    Req/Sec   194.56k    33.75k  309.33k    77.04%
  369617503 requests in 2.00m, 49.57GB read
Requests/sec: 3080169.65
Transfer/sec:    423.00MB
Correctly write single ByteBuf with memoryAddress

Motivation:

While optimize gathering writes I introduced a bug when writing single ByteBuf that have a memoryAddress. This regression was introduced by 88bd6e7a9300073707f305409fa6481f1eeb2077.

Modifications:

Correctly use the writerIndex as argument when call Native.writeAddress(...)

Result:

No more corruption while write single buffers.
[#2692] Allows notify ChannelFutureProgressListener on complete writes

Motivation:

We have some inconsistency when handling writes. Sometimes we call ChannelOutboundBuffer.progress(...) also for complete writes and sometimes not. We should call it always.

Modifications:

Correctly call ChannelOuboundBuffer.progress(...) for complete and incomplete writes.

Result:

Consistent behavior
[#2708] DnsResource.duplicate() should return DnsResource and not ByteBufHolder

Motivation:

DnsResource.duplicate() should return DnsResource and not ByteBufHolder

Modifications:

Change return type from ByteBufHolder to DnsResource

Result:

No need to cast to the correct type when using duplicate()