Release Notes

What is new: engine, families, automation, server, ecosystem, collaboration, editor and quality

This release is a large step for Beep.Skia: the canvas engine was stabilized and extended, every diagram family was deepened with the analysis features professionals expect, and four new subsystems were added — an automation runtime, a server execution SKU, an extension ecosystem, and collaboration.

Table of Contents

Highlights

  • 16 diagram families, each with real analysis behind it — not just shapes.
  • Diagrams are executable. Any diagram built from automation nodes runs as a workflow, locally or as a queued job on a server.
  • Extensible by design. Components and commands ship as .beepkg packages and appear in the palette.
  • Multi-user ready. Sharing, review comments, presence and audit, all thread-safe and persisted.
  • 501 tests, seven whole-surface sweeps, and a hardening record of 24 fixed defects.

Core Engine

  • Undo/redo repaired and completed — every action is undoable and redoable, history depth is capped, and replay no longer records nested history.
  • Interaction — middle-button panning, Tab/Shift+Tab selection cycling, working context menu, corrected hit-testing and drag behaviour.
  • Rendering — single-pass component partitioning, reused drawing contexts, cached connection-line paints and typefaces; 199 lines went from +17 KB/frame of allocation to effectively zero with pixel-identical output.
  • Serialization v2 — schema version, typed property bag for complex values, theme, and connection-point identity so lines survive a save/load round-trip.
  • Export and print — export render path excludes overlays, PDF tiling, print preview.
  • Component fixes — setting Width/Height now refreshes Bounds; the text box highlights its selection; palette categories rebuild when items are added after first render.

Diagram Families

FamilyWhat is new
FlowchartStructured code generation (pseudocode, Python, C#) and a step-through simulator with branch selection
ERDDDL import, schema comparison, and forward/rollback migration script generation with UNIQUE/CHECK and dialect handling
UMLComponent, deployment and artifact nodes, sequence activation bars and combined fragments, XMI export
DFDLevelled drill-down navigation and balancing validation
State MachineGuard conditions, transition actions and triggers, composite regions, validation
Mind MapRadial auto-layout, collapse/expand with connection visibility, rich text
BPMN / BusinessDiagram-interchange export, task types, an importer, pools, lanes and message flows
Project ManagementDependency lag, critical-path computation (early/late, float), Gantt timeline node
ETLExpression engine, data profiler and preview table, pipeline metrics, JSON/XML flattening with schema inference
NetworkPageRank, shortest and simple paths, connected components
QuantitativeReal chart rendering across chart types with a series model
SecuritySTRIDE analysis, DREAD scoring and MITRE ATT&CK mapping
Machine LearningPipeline topology export to JSON
ECADElectrical pin model and electrical rules checking (short circuits, unconnected pins)
Well LogsLAS parsing with multi-track grouping
CloudBranded AWS, Azure and GCP nodes

Automation Runtime

  • WorkflowEngine completed: retry policies, workflow variables, real pause/resume/cancel, per-node results and events.
  • Trigger pack: manual, schedule, event and file-watch triggers with validation, activation counters and disposal.
  • Credential vault (AES with PBKDF2-SHA256) and a connection manager, both thread-safe, with tamper detection and masked listing.
  • Diagram bridge: ToWorkflowDefinition() turns the canvas into an executable workflow, and saved diagrams keep their wiring and configuration.

Server Execution SKU

  • WorkflowExecutionService — publish workflows, submit jobs with inputs, bounded-concurrency queue, job states, pause/resume/cancel, listing and events.
  • WorkflowExecutionApi — JSON facade that can publish a saved diagram as an executable workflow.
  • WorkflowRequestRouter — HTTP routing with proper status codes, kept transport-agnostic and unit-tested.
  • Beep.Skia.Sample.Server — a runnable ASP.NET minimal-API host with demo and publish options.

Extension Ecosystem

  • ISkiaExtension contract plus SkiaExtensionHost (discovery, validation, custom categories, commands, diagnostics).
  • .beepkg packages with manifests (host version, dependencies, tags) and a builder that computes the SHA-256.
  • ExtensionPackageManager — install, update, uninstall, catalog persistence and load directories.
  • Security: zip-slip rejection, decompression-bomb limits, dependency and host-version gates, no partial state on failure.

Collaboration

  • Sharing with Viewer / Commenter / Editor / Admin roles and public read-only links.
  • Comments anchored to components, rendered as numbered review pins on the canvas.
  • Presence with activity and expiry, plus a full audit trail of sharing and review actions.
  • JSON persistence next to the diagram, thread-safe operation and snapshot reads.

Assisted Generation

  • IDiagramAssistant provider contract with a priority registry and automatic fallback.
  • Offline rule-based assistant: a compact flowchart DSL and indented mind-map outlines, with ranked and radial layout.
  • Generated diagrams are ordinary DiagramDtos — editable, savable and executable.

Editor Experience

  • Palette search with live filtering and correct handling of late-added items.
  • Minimap with viewport rectangle and exposed mapping maths.
  • Property editing that writes back through public setters, edits colours as hex, and supports multi-selection.
  • Twelve templates with explicit wiring, and keyboard/high-contrast accessibility.

Platforms

  • Five hosts in the solution: WinForms (flagship), WPF, Blazor, MAUI and Avalonia.
  • Avalonia renders through an offscreen Skia surface, so it needs no SkiaSharp view package and stays on the same SkiaSharp version as the core.
  • Shared design-time descriptor types moved into the core, which is what let all hosts come back into the build.

Quality and Release Engineering

  • 501 tests covering every library, with seven whole-surface sweeps over all 293 component types.
  • Zero warnings across the solution, enforced by warnings-as-errors in CI.
  • MinVer versioning from git tags, a CI solution filter, and a GitHub Actions pipeline that builds, tests and packs on tags.
  • 23 packages with audited metadata (descriptions, project and repository URLs, copyright), verified by consuming them from standalone projects on net8.0, net9.0 and net10.0.

Notable Fixes

  • Save/load lost data silently — automation connections, automation configuration and ML connections are now preserved.
  • Six crash paths — hostile input to the expression parser and evaluator, the mind-map layout, and a component drawing a disposed path could terminate the process; all are now bounded with clear errors.
  • Thread safety — the collaboration service, credential vault and package catalog are safe under concurrent use, and role state is no longer handed out by reference.
  • Packaging — placeholder descriptions, wrong repository URLs, unused dependencies and a hidden .NET Framework asset fallback were corrected.