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starburst 0.3.9 (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)

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 starburst_error() helper for rich error messages
  • Every error includes relevant context (quota limits, resources, regions)
  • Actionable solutions provided (not just “something failed”)
  • Links to troubleshooting guide for detailed help
  • Specialized errors: quota_error(), permission_error(), task_failure_error()

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

• build_base_image() - Build base Docker image with common dependencies
• ensure_base_image() - Check for/create base image as needed
• get_base_image_uri() - Get ECR URI for base image

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

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.