Changelog

All notable changes to this project are documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

0.4.0 - 2026-10-25

Rebus can now serve D-Bus as well as call it: applications can export objects, answer method calls and own bus names. Unix file descriptors arrive as handles that close themselves, and passing them is opt-in.

Added

• Services. Rebus.Service exports objects described by Rebus.Interface declarations and sends each validated method call to a handler process. use Rebus.Object runs an exported object as a GenServer. Exported objects answer Properties and Introspectable, so busctl, gdbus and d-feet can find and describe them, and Rebus.Service.emit/6 and Rebus.Service.properties_changed/6 send typed signals. See the Exporting objects guide.
• Rebus.Bus.request_name/4 and Rebus.Bus.release_name/3 own well-known bus names and notify the owner when a name is acquired or lost.
• Rebus.unique_name/1 returns a connection's unique bus name.
• Rebus.connect/2 takes :max_pending_calls and :max_message_size to bound inbound work.
• Precompiled descriptor-passing libraries for x86_64 and aarch64 Linux (glibc and musl) and macOS. Other targets build from source with make and a C++17 compiler.

Changed

• Breaking: Unix file descriptor passing is opt-in with config :rebus, unix_fds: true. Without it, Rebus is pure Elixir. See Enabling descriptor passing.
• Breaking: descriptors are Rebus.UnixFD handles rather than raw numbers. A handle closes its descriptor exactly once, when it is closed, when its owner exits or when it is garbage collected. Use Rebus.UnixFD.with_fd/2 to work with the number.
• Breaking: Rebus.call/3 returns a D-Bus error reply as {:error, {:dbus_error, message}}.
• Calls to a path with nothing exported are answered with UnknownObject.
• A failed match-rule cleanup no longer closes the connection. Rebus sends a :rebus_match_uncertain notice instead.

Fixed

• Fixes to connection setup timeouts, EXTERNAL authentication and descriptor handling on macOS.

0.3.0 - 2026-09-06

Rebus 0.3 expands the client API for method calls, signal subscriptions, descriptor passing, and authenticated bus or peer connections. It includes several breaking corrections to public results and wire handling.

Added

• Added Rebus.call/3, Rebus.send/2, Rebus.send/3, and Rebus.close/1 for client operations and explicit connection lifetime management. Connections are supervised, outlive their creator by default, and can instead follow an owner: pid.
• Added structured signal subscriptions with Rebus.MatchRule, Rebus.add_match/3, and Rebus.remove_match/3, including recovery when a timed-out bus operation leaves the rule's state uncertain.
• Added Unix file descriptor passing on Linux and macOS local sockets. Senders retain ownership of outbound descriptors; callers own received reply descriptors and close them with Rebus.UnixFD.close/1.
• Added DBUS_COOKIE_SHA1 authentication, opt-in ANONYMOUS authentication, ordered D-Bus address lists, Unix and TCP addresses, and server-GUID checks.

Changed

• Bare version tags now publish the corresponding package and documentation to Hex after the test suite passes.
• Breaking: calls now return the complete reply as {:ok, message} or a complete D-Bus error reply as {:error, message}; operation errors and signal-handler registration results also use the new documented shapes.
• Breaking: message construction and validation now use structured atom or tuple reasons and reject invalid bodies, signatures, headers, and D-Bus names that earlier versions accepted.
• Breaking: decoding rejects invalid Boolean values and non-zero alignment padding, and special doubles are represented as :infinity, :negative_infinity, and :nan.
• Breaking: Rebus.connect/2 is now the supported connection constructor, waits for bus registration before returning, and reports authentication and registered-name failures with the new documented results; connect!/2 now raises ArgumentError on failure.
• Breaking: Rebus now requires Elixir 1.18 or later.
• Connections now answer org.freedesktop.DBus.Peer calls and reject other inbound method calls with UnknownMethod.

Removed

• Breaking: removed Windows support. Rebus supports Linux and macOS.

Fixed

• Corrected array lengths, fragmented-message handling, connection failure paths, body-encoding failures, timed-out reply cleanup, well-known names containing hyphens, and standard system/session bus address fallbacks.

0.2.0 - 2025-11-21

Added

• Rebus.connect/2 accepts the :system and :session bus aliases, resolving the system bus from the :rebus, :system_bus_address application setting and the session bus from DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS.
• Rebus.connect!/2, which raises instead of returning {:error, reason}.
• Rebus.Message.signature/1 for reading a message's body signature.

Changed

• Rebus.Message no longer carries a separate :signature struct field; the signature is stored in header_fields and set automatically when a body is present.

0.1.1 - 2025-11-04

Fixed

• Corrected errors in the public API documentation.

0.1.0 - 2025-11-04

Added

• Initial release: D-Bus message encoder, decoder and wire-format types, message construction and validation, and a supervised bus connection with signal handlers.