Obelisk 0.32: Cancellation, WebAPI, Postgres

Summary

Obelisk 0.32: Cancellation, WebAPI, Postgres 2025-12-29 Obelisk 0.32 introduces cooperative cancellation for workflows and activities, a new WebAPI with multi-format support, and PostgreSQL support for multi-node deployments and high availability. Cancellation As discussed in the previous announcement, each function invoked by Obelisk, whether a workflow or an activity, must be fallible. As of v0.29.0 this includes persistent sleep as well. This enabled not only cancellation of activities and delay requests, but also a clean way of handling cancellation in the workflows: workflow_support::sleep(ScheduleAt::In(SchedulingDuration::Seconds(10))) .map_err(|()| MyWorkflowError::Cancelled)?; some_activity::send_request() .map_err(|()| MyWorkflowError::Cancelled)?; // Handle cancellation and running out of retry attempts. Cancellation is performed either by using gRPC or the WebAPI discussed below. The only way to cancel a workflow is to cancel its "leafs" - activites and delay requests. Some workflow engines support workflow cancellation, but the act of stopping workflow at the next step is not compatible with cleanup / compensating actions required for distributed sagas. Obelisk only supports cooperative cancellation of workflows, which in turn makes writing compensating actions natural: fn app_init( org_slug: String, app_name: String, obelisk_config: ObeliskConfig, init_config: AppInitConfig, ) -> Result<(), AppInitError> { // Launch sub-workflows by using import. // In case of any error including a trap (panic), delete the whole app. workflow_import::prepare_volume(...) .map_err(|err| cleanup(...))?; workflow_import::wait_for_secrets(...) .map_err(|err| cleanup(...))?; workflow_import::start_final_vm(...) .map_err(|err| cleanup(...))?; workflow_import::wait_for_health_check(...) .map_err(|err| cleanup(...))?; Ok(()) } source: obelisk-deploy-flyio The app-init workflow calls several child workflows, each calling an HTTP activity or sleep. It does not matter whether one ...