What’s new in JMeter 5.5?

I have been posting what’s new in JMeter from past several releases. In this blog post, we are going to see what’s new in JMeter 5.5. After many months since JMeter 5.4.1 release, Apache community has released 5.5 with a couple of new features, several improvements and fixes.

How to download Apache JMeter 5.5?

As usual, head to https://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi to download the latest version of JMeter. The only prerequisite is Java 8+.

If you are a PC user, download the zip file, else download the tar variant.

What’s new in JMeter 5.5?

The following are the new features and important changes made in 5.5.

• A brand-new thread group, Open Model Thread Group
• JMeter now supports Java 17.
• Log4j 2.17.2 is now available.
• the ability to choose the Java based Regex implementation. The inception of the deprecating Jakarta Oro (Original Reusable Objects) based regex in the properties.
• Kotlin is being used in the core classes and tests, e.g. Open Model Thread Group

Apart from the above changes, JMeter 5.5 has several bug fixes and enhancements in almost all the areas.

Following are the bug fixes done in this release:

• Bug 65027 – Detect mime-type for files automatically when adding files to HTTP Sampler
• Bug 65020 – HTTP Sampler/Files upload tab – add missing buttons

• Pull request #650 – HTTP Sampler timestamp fix when exception is caught.

• Bug 65328 – Pull request #666 – HTTP 308 Permanent Redirect is not supported.

• Bug 65149 – Pull request #644 – Encode the personal part of email addresses in SMTP Sampler
• Pull request #638 – Various additions to the Bolt Sampler. Added transaction timeout, database option required for Neo4j 4.x (with multi-database support) and access mode option, that allows running against a Neo4j Enterprise Causal Cluster.

• Pull request #665 – Increase visible lines of code in IfController and WhileController.

• Bug 64988 – Sort properties and variables in a human expected order for DebugPostProcessor and DebugSampler

• Bug 63061 – Sort View Results in Table in a human expected order

• Pull request #638 – Bolt Connection Configuration: added ConnectionPoolMaxSize parameter.

• Bug 65515 – Allow pooling of Prepared Statements in JDBC
• Bug 65353 – Make the estimator used for calculating percentiles on the dashboard configurable
• Bug 61805 – Pull request #663 – Add simple HTTP request template.

Upgrades

• Bug 65128 – Pull request #643 – Add missing documentation about Same user on each iteration for Thread Groups.
• Pull request #648 – Updated xmlgraphics-commons to 2.6 (from 2.3).
• Pull request #655 – Pull request #667 – Updated x-stream to 1.4.17 (from 1.4.15).
• Pull request #656 – Pull request #668 – Updated json-smart to 2.4.7 (from 2.3), accessors-smart to 2.4.7 (from 1.2) and asm 9.1 (from 9.0).
• Bug 64831 – Log truststore entries in debug level for logger org.apache.jmeter.util.keystore.JmeterKeyStore
• Bug 65232 – Hide splash screen when an error is displayed because the test plan could not be parsed.
• Updated Groovy to 3.0.8 (from 3.0.7).
• Updated Darklaf to 2.7.2 (from 2.5.4).
• Updated Apache ActiveMQ to 15.6.2 (from 15.6.0).
• Updated Asm to 9.2 (from 9.1).
• Updated Bouncycastle to 1.69 (from 1.67).
• Updated Caffeine to 2.9.2 (from 2.8.8).
• Updated Apache commons-dbcp2 to 2.9.0 (from 2.8.0).
• Updated Apache commons-io to 2.11.0 (from 2.8.0).
• Updated Apache commons-lang3 to 3.12.0 (from 3.11).
• Updated Apache commons-net to 3.8.0 (from 3.7.2).
• Updated Apache commons-pool2 to 2.11.0 (from 2.9.0).
• Updated equalsverifier to 3.7 (from 3.4.2).
• Updated Apache Freemarker to 2.3.31 (from 2.3.30).
• Updated hsqldb to 2.5.2 (from 2.5.0).
• Updated hsqldb to 2.6.0 (from 2.5.0).
• Updated Apache HttpClient to 4.5.13 (from 4.5.12).
• Updated Apache HttpCore to 4.4.14 (from 4.4.13).
• Updated json-path to 2.6.0 (from 2.4.0).
• Updated jsoup to 1.14.1 (from 1.13.1).
• Updated JUnit to 4.13.2 and 5.7.2 (from 4.13.1 and 5.7.0).
• Updated Apache log4j2 to 2.14.1 (from 2.13.3).
• Updated Miglayout to 5.3 (from 5.2).
• Updated Neo4j Java driver to 4.3.3 (from 4.2.0).
• Updated Objenesis to 3.2 (from 2.6).
• Updated PH CSS and PH commons to 6.3.4 and 9.5.5 (from 6.2.3 and 9.5.1).
• Updated RSyntaxTextArea to 3.1.3 (from 3.1.1).
• Updated SLF4J to 1.7.32 (from 1.7.30).
• Updated SvgSalamander to 1.1.2.4 (from 1.1.2.1).
• Updated Apache Tika to 1.27 (from 1.26).
• Updated WireMock-JRE8 to 2.30.0 (from 2.24.1).
• Pull request #671 – Move example definition of property jmeter.reportgenerator.statistic_window to user.properties, as it is read from that place
• Bug 65456 – Updated commons-jexl 3 to 3.2.1 (from 3.1).

Fixes

• Bug 65310 – Don’t let users override multipart/form-data content-type header in HC4 sampler.
• Bug65363 – NullPointerException in HTTPHC4Impl$ManagedCredentialsProvider.getAuthorizationForAuthScope when 401 response from remote and httpclient4.auth.preemptive=false
• Bug 65152 – OS Process Sampler – Cannot Add from Clipboard Command parameters
• Pull request #638 – Bolt Sampler: fixed error displaying results when “Record Query Results” is enabled. 
• Bug 64962 – Save CSV sub-results recursively from View Results Tree
• Bug 65257 – JMESPathExtractor writes error log entries if JMESPath filter returns empty result
• Bug 65259 – JMESPathExtractor Attribute Match No. Required
• Bug 65269 – JSON Extractor and JSON JMESPath Extractor ignore sub-samples
• Bug 65352 – Warning logged when Boundary Extractor doesn’t find any match
• Bug 64318 – DNS Cache Manager – custom DNS resolver does not use system resolver by default
• Pull request #641 – Updated xercesImpl to 2.12.1 (from 2.12.0). Based on patch by Stefan Seide (stefan at trilobyte-se.de).
• Pull request #645 – Add escaping for new lines in AbstractInfluxdbMetricsSender. Contributed by David Getzlaff (david.getzlaff at t-systems.com>)
• Bug 65198 – Can’t copy generated function from FunctionHelper
• Updated Apache Tika to 1.26 (from 1.24.1)
• Pull request #658 – Improve javadoc. Contributed by Ori Marko (orimarko at gmail.com)
• Pull request #661 – Fix wording in doc. Contributed by BugKing (wangzhen at fit2cloud.com)
• Pull request #664 – Allow whitespace in path. Contributed by Till Neunast (github.com/tilln)
• Bug 65270 – POST application/x-www-form-urlencoded cURL code generated from Postman is not imported correctly
• Silence warnings of missing font Arial on startup under linux
• Bug 65300 – IllegalAccessError when opening file dialog with Java 16

Conclusion

Open Model Thread Group, deprecation of Ora based regex implementation, Java 17 support and more makes 5.5 shiny. I’d recommend upgrading to the latest version of JMeter at the earliest, because of the fixes and the upgrades in the JARs.