New in 0.9

Released. Core 0.9.0, the DuckDB 1.3.0 and document 1.3.0 plugins, and skills 5.0.0 are published.

Selected runs can proceed when another report is broken

dre run monthly checks that selection and its dependencies. Discovered errors in other reports produce N other reports have errors; run dre validate on stderr (singular for one report). Each Binding’s run_results.json adds project_errors: one path, code and message entry per affected report. Selected-report errors and errors in project-wide dependencies still stop the run. See Build and run reports for the checks discovery covers.

dre validate remains the strict whole-project check, including when -s selects which Bindings to show. No new strict flag is needed for runs.

Runs no longer rebuild the whole manifest. dre compile and dre validate still write the full manifest; a run leaves it unchanged and sets manifest_checksum to null. Integrations that need the current project description should call dre validate --json or dre compile first. See When it’s written.

Remove the per-row population cap

Remove for_each.max_population_rows from project YAML. It is rejected with a migration message, without a deprecation period. Populations stay in the Arrow spool and a temporary disk index; workers render bounded chunks, so no population row cap is needed. Allow disk space for those files. Filter or aggregate in SQL when you need fewer copies; a document’s own max_rows still applies to each document.

Other behavior changes

• Per-row delivery records and dre release use the same delivery error text and codes as Binding runs, including local/file-exists and the reminder that output is still in target/. A failed delivery no longer records retries from earlier batches.
• Validation rejects two unnamed outputs with the same extension, such as delimited and fixed_width. Per-row splitting rejects a query name containing /.
• dre plugin list gives a different error when a package manifest names no plugin. Git macro packages clone into temporary dre_deps/.clone-* folders.
• With JSON logs, a template query that fails during dre compile or dre run --dry-run has error_code: compile-needs-run, rather than run-failed.
• An output key set to null in a layer inherits the outer value. For example, destination: null in a Set inherits the report’s destination.
• Template scans ignore Jinja-looking text inside strings, comments and {% raw %} blocks, and ignore each.x outside {{ }}. A source-role scan recognizes only the keyword argument named role.
• The parse pass runs once during planning: run.now used to choose a profile or source is the plan’s instant. With multiple threads, source describe log lines appear during planning, before the target line. Connection limits bound the number of workers started.

PDF fonts, including offline servers

The document 1.3.0 plugin uses checksum-verified Noto fonts for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari and Thai PDFs without project fonts. Downloads are cached under ~/.dre/fonts. Han text follows the HTML lang attribute per element; without a suitable language, kana selects Japanese, Hangul selects Korean, and other Han text uses Simplified Chinese with a note suggesting lang. HTML output keeps the reader’s fonts.

When a fallback font is unavailable, the PDF is made with boxes and warns once per script per run. The warning explains three fixes: an offline DRE_REGISTRY_URL copy, dre fonts install on a connected machine followed by copying the cache, or project @font-face fonts. Core tries each font package once per run. The PDF option missing_fonts: error fails the output or per-row copy instead; warn is the default. The option is rejected on HTML outputs.

dre fonts install <script>... (or --all) prepares the cache, accepting registry script codes and language aliases; dre fonts ls lists cached packages, versions, scripts, sizes and verification status. See offline PDF fonts.

Core APIs and scale

Core has a per-run context and a plugin-host interface, one delivery module and format catalog, query-based project access, one Jinja parser, and explicit run stages with typed errors. Format and destination processes are reused across outputs and Bindings, bounded by workers.

For Rust callers, RunOptions takes mode: Mode and rows: RowOptions; RunSummary::error is an Error. engine::EventSink replaces run::Ui and engine::dispatch. find_plugin is in plugin_host, render_connection in profiles, and Level in engine. Error::hint was removed. Template scanning uses MiniJinja’s unstable_machinery feature; check scanning behavior when upgrading MiniJinja (the lockfile pins the current version).

Compatibility and release order

DuckDB remains an optional plugin. For projects using it, core 0.9.0 needs duckdb 1.3.0 or later: connection serialization for a DuckDB file now comes from the source’s single_writer description. DuckDB 1.2.1 does not provide it. Install a compatible DuckDB plugin before core; projects that do not use DuckDB do not need that package.

The protocol and plugins keep their own version schemes. This source uses dre-protocol 0.10.0; the core release publishes that crate before the core crates that depend on it. The font reply adds optional repeated (absent means false), with wire version still 1. Rust ResultSets::request_fonts returns Result<Result<Vec<String>, FontError>>.

Publish required font registry assets before the document plugin that fetches them, and publish the compatible DuckDB and document plugins before core 0.9.0. The PDF font work and this core change must pass combined validation before that release.

Document 1.3.0 needs core 0.9.0 for the new font behavior. With an older core it can still make PDFs using available project fonts, but cannot fetch fallback fonts; missing_fonts: error then fails a PDF needing a fallback with a message requiring DRE 0.9.0. Core’s dre fonts commands work with any document plugin.

Skills 5.0.0 support DRE >=0.9.0, <0.10.0. Skills 4.x remain available for earlier DRE minors.