LTS Releases

Fixed a deserialization error for subscription query updates carrying a void result. Axon Server connector clients on Axon Framework 5.3.2+ set an empty (0-byte) payload instead of omitting it entirely for void updates, which Axon Framework 4 failed to deserialize. Empty payloads are now treated the same as an absent payload, with the same safeguard added to GrpcBackedResponseMessage.

Fixed Axon Framework 4 failing to deserialize void command results returned by an Axon Framework 5 application, caused by the same empty-payload behavior described above.

Bumped the github-dependencies group across one directory with two updates.

Bumped js-yaml, @antora/cli, and @antora/site-generator in /docs/_playbook.

Moved the Bill-of-Materials module into the LTS repository itself, aligning its version with the other LTS modules so it can no longer drift from them as a separately maintained artifact.

Switched release artifact publishing to a dedicated service account.

Subscription query initial results now follow the same ConvertingResponseMessage conversion flow used for direct queries, so singular and plural (for example, array or list) results are both handled consistently.

MetadataSpanAttributesProvider no longer throws a NullPointerException on null metadata values; it now resolves values with String#valueOf instead of calling toString() on them directly.

Errors escaping a Unit of Work, WorkPackage, or Coordinator commit/abort path (for example, a NoSuchMethodError from a dependency version mismatch) are now caught instead of silently killing the component without rolling back. UnitOfWork#attachTransaction was also hardened so a transaction is concluded exactly once, with a cleanup safety net in case commit or rollback never fire.

Command and query results of type java.lang.String returned by an Axon Framework 5 application are now deserialized correctly. Axon Server sends such results as raw UTF-8 bytes rather than JSON-quoted strings, which previously made Axon Framework 4 fail to parse them; a new GrpcRawStringAwareSerializer falls back to a raw UTF-8 decode only when the regular serializer cannot parse the payload.

Queries dispatched by an Axon Framework 5 application, which no longer sets the response_type field, can now find a matching query handler on Axon Framework 4. The missing field previously made the response type resolve to an UnknownSerializedType, preventing any handler match; it is now mapped to the same IgnoredResponseType already used for subscription query updates.

@ReplayContext handlers no longer receive a replay context for live events delivered while a ReplayToken wrapper is still present but the processor is no longer replaying. ReplayToken#replayContext and #getTokenAtReset are now gated on the actual replay status, and an inverted type check that caused @ReplayContext parameters declared as a supertype to resolve to null was fixed.

Bumped the maven-dependencies group across several rounds of updates.

Bumped actions/setup-java from 5.6.0 to 6.0.0 in the github-dependencies group.

Bumped org.hibernate.orm:hibernate-core from 6.6.54.Final to 6.6.55.Final.

axon-legacy has been removed. It contained compatibility shims for reading data serialized by Axon 2 and Axon 3 (amongst others, AggregateScopeDescriptor, SagaScopeDescriptor, GapAwareTrackingToken, GlobalSequenceTrackingToken, MongoTrackingToken, the legacy GenericMessage/GenericEventMessage/MetaData classes, and LegacyAwareJobDataBinder). Anyone on the 4.x LTS line is long past an Axon 2 or 3 migration, so the module, along with its joda-time and axon-mongo dependencies, has been dropped. If you still hold Axon 2/3-serialized tracking tokens, scope descriptors, or Quartz triggers in a datastore, convert them before upgrading.

axon-migration has been removed. It shipped the OpenRewrite recipes (axon-javax-4, axon-jakarta-4) for migrating projects to Axon Framework 4.7, and pinned OpenRewrite and Jackson to old versions to do so.

LMAX Disruptor was upgraded from 3.4.4 to 4.0.0 in axon-disruptor. This has two consequences: CommandHandlerInvoker no longer implements com.lmax.disruptor.LifecycleAware (removed in Disruptor 4, a source- and binary-incompatible change for anyone referencing that type), and Disruptor 4 no longer accepts an Executor, only a ThreadFactory. DisruptorCommandBus now passes an internal AxonThreadFactory to the ring buffer; an Executor supplied through DisruptorCommandBus.Builder#executor still drives the publisher threads, but no longer the ring buffer’s own event-processor threads.

axon-test now pulls in JUnit Jupiter 6.1.2 (compile scope, transitive). If you do not manage the JUnit version yourself, your test classpath moves from Jupiter 5.13.4 to 6.1.2. Import junit-bom or pin org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter to stay on 5.x.

jakarta.persistence-api moved from 3.0.0 to 3.2.0, and jakarta.annotation-api from 2.1.1 to 3.0.0, both optional dependencies representing Jakarta EE 11 API versions. Spring Boot 3.x manages jakarta.persistence-api at 3.1.0, and that managed version continues to win in a Boot-managed project.

The test-scope EL implementation moved from javax.el/org.glassfish.web:el-impl to jakarta.el/org.glassfish:jakarta.el. This affects the framework’s own bean-validation tests only; nothing changes on the published classpath.

Deliberately not upgraded, to keep the LTS baseline intact: Spring Framework 5.3.39, Spring Boot 2.7.18, Spring Security 5.8.16, Hibernate ORM 5.6.15.Final, Hibernate Validator 6.2.5.Final, Ehcache 2.10.9.2, XStream 1.4.21, Avro 1.12.0, dom4j 2.1.5.

Fixed the framework4-springboot4 example application configuration so it runs against a standalone Axon Server and in local development.