v1.80.0

API Changes

• core: Added PickResult.copyWithSubchannel() and PickResult.copyWithStreamTracerFactory() to simplify updating PickResult while preserving metadata. Load balancing policies should now ensure ForwardingSubchannel decorators are unwrapped before being returned in a pick result. (#​12658) (eae16b2)

Bug Fixes

• core: Fixed the retry backoff jitter range to [0.8, 1.2] to align with the gRPC A6 specification. Retries will now occur more consistently around the calculated backoff interval. (#​12639) (024fdd0)
  core: Fixed a race condition in RetriableStream where inFlightSubStreams counting could become inconsistent during concurrent retry and deadline events. This ensures that client calls (such as blockingUnaryCall) do not hang indefinitely and correctly receive a close signal. (#​12649) (73abb48)

Improvements

• api: Trigger R8's ServiceLoader optimization to reduce necessary configuration when using R8 Full Mode (470219f). This allows gRPC to avoid reflection, and the need to specify -keeps for various class’s constructors.
  Upgrade to protobuf 33.4 (#​12615) (50c18f1)
• cronet: Introduced CRONET_READ_BUFFER_SIZE_KEY to allow customizing the read buffer size per-stream via CallOptions. Increasing the buffer size from the 4KB default can significantly improve performance for large messages by reducing JNI and context-switching overhead. (31fdb6c)
• api: Moved FlagResetRule to api/testFixtures and updated ManagedChannelRegistry to honor the GRPC_ENABLE_RFC3986_URIS feature flag. This ensures that target parsing is consistent across the library when the new URI parser is enabled. (#​12608)
• api: Updated NameResolverRegistry to natively support io.grpc.Uri. This is a foundational change that allows gRPC's name resolution system to handle URIs parsed with the new RFC 3986-compliant parser, ensuring more robust target handling. (#​12609) (9903488)
• xds: Removed the GRPC_EXPERIMENTAL_XDS_SNI feature flag. SNI determination via xDS is now always enabled and follows gRFC A101, where SNI is derived from xDS configurations like auto_host_sni or UpstreamTlsContext.sni. This ensures that no SNI is sent if not explicitly configured, unless the legacy channel authority fallback is enabled. (#​12625) (ac44e96)

New Features

• core: pick_first shuffling now a weighted shuffle and observes weights from EDS (34dd290). This finishes the gRFC A113 pick_first: Weighted Random Shuffling support
• netty: Added RFC 3986 support to the unix: name resolver. This enables proper parsing of Unix domain socket URIs, including correct handling of query and fragment components in both hierarchical (e.g., unix:///path) and opaque (e.g., unix:/path) formats. (#​12659)

Thanks to

• @​becomeStar
• @​aymanm-google
• @​PetitBaguette
• @​stagegrowth
• @​wcchoi
• @​Gyuhyeok99