v1.0.0: First Flight 🪁 - The Zero-Dependency Kafka Alternative

🚀 KiteMQ

first release of KiteMQ, a next-generation message broker designed for the modern JVM ecosystem. KiteMQ is built to prove that the era of massive, resource-heavy event streaming platforms (like traditional Kafka or ZooKeeper-backed systems) is evolving: with Java 21, we return to a lightweight, zero-dependency architecture that delivers blistering performance and instant startup times while remaining 100% protocol-compatible.

Key Highlights:

• Loom-Native Core: Fully powered by Java 21 Virtual Threads (Project Loom). Scales to tens of thousands of concurrent client connections using a simple, readable "thread-per-connection" model, completely eliminating the need for complex asynchronous frameworks (like Netty) while maintaining minimal memory overhead.
• Panama FFI & Zero-Copy I/O: Deep integration with Java's Foreign Function & Memory API. Utilizes Linux-native sendfile(2) and mmap(2) syscalls for true Zero-copy data fetching. Bytes are moved directly from the OS page cache to the network socket, drastically reducing CPU load and JVM heap pressure.
• Native Kafka Compatibility: Speaks the standard Apache Kafka® wire protocol out-of-the-box. Drop KiteMQ into your existing infrastructure and use standard Kafka clients (Java, Go, Python, Rust) for Produce, Fetch, Metadata, and ListOffsets without changing a single line of your application code.
• Built-in Group Coordination: Fully functional Consumer Group management and Offset Storage (__consumer_offsets). Includes robust support for complex group lifecycles (JoinGroup, SyncGroup, Heartbeat) handled entirely in-core, requiring no external consensus systems.
• Zero Dependencies & Instant Boot: The core broker has exactly 0 external runtime dependencies. It boots in under 50 milliseconds on standard hardware, making it the absolute perfect candidate for embedded usage, edge computing, local development, and blazing-fast CI/CD integration testing.