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Boost Training Goodput: How Continuous Checkpointing Optimizes Reliability in Orbax and MaxText

The newly introduced continuous checkpointing feature in Orbax and MaxText is designed to optimize the balance between reliability and performance during model training, addressing issues with conventional fixed-frequency checkpointing. Unlike fixed intervals—which can either compromise reliability or bottleneck performance—continuous checkpointing maximizes I/O bandwidth and minimizes failure risk by asynchronously initiating a new save operation only after the previous one successfully completes. Benchmarks demonstrate that this approach significantly reduces checkpoint intervals and results in substantial resource conservation, especially in large-scale training jobs where mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) is short.

Beta Channel Update for ChromeOS / ChromeOS Flex

 The ChromeOS Beta channel is being updated to OS version 16610.24.0 (Browser version 147.0.7727.45) for most ChromeOS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways:
  1. File a bug
  2. Visit our ChromeOS communities

    1. General: Chromebook Help Community

    2. Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community

  3. Report an issue or send feedback on Chrome

  4. Interested in switching channels? Find out how.

Alon Bajayo

Google ChromeOS Release

ADK Go 1.0 Arrives!

The launch of Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Go 1.0 marks a significant shift from experimental AI scripts to production-ready services by prioritizing observability, security, and extensibility. Key updates include native OpenTelemetry integration for deep tracing, a new plugin system for self-healing logic, and "Human-in-the-Loop" confirmations to ensure safety during sensitive operations. Additionally, the release introduces YAML-based configurations for rapid iteration and refined Agent2Agent (A2A) protocols to support seamless communication across different programming languages. This framework empowers developers to build complex, reliable multi-agent systems using the high-performance engineering standards of Golang.

Chrome for Android Update

    Hi, everyone! We've just released Chrome 146 (146.0.76380.177) for Android. It'll become available on Google Play over the next few days. 

This release includes stability and performance improvements. You can see a full list of the changes in the Git log. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.


Android releases contain the same security fixes as their corresponding Desktop releases (Windows & Mac: 146.0.7680.177/.178, Linux:  146.0.7680.177) unless otherwise noted.

Krishna Govind

Stable Channel Update for Desktop

The Stable channel has been updated to 146.0.7680.177/178 for Windows/Mac  and 146.0.7680.177 for Linux, which will roll out over the coming days/weeks. A full list of changes in this build is available in the Log





Interested in switching release channels? Find out how here. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Srinivas Sista

Google Chrome

Google Cloud: Investing in the future of PostgreSQL

At Google Cloud, we are deeply committed to open source, and PostgreSQL is a cornerstone of our managed database offerings, including Cloud SQL & AlloyDB.

Continuing our work with the PostgreSQL community, we've been contributing to the core engine and participating in the patch review process. Below is a summary of that technical activity, highlighting our efforts to enhance the performance, stability, and resilience of the upstream project. By strengthening these core capabilities, we aim to drive innovation that benefits the entire global PostgreSQL ecosystem and its diverse user base.

Our investments in PostgreSQL logical replication aim to unlock critical capabilities for all users. By enhancing conflict detection, we are paving the way for robust active-active replication setups, increasing write scalability and high availability. We are also focused on expanding logical replication to cover missing objects. This is key to enabling major version upgrades with minimal downtime, offering a more flexible alternative to pg_upgrade. Furthermore, our ongoing contributions to bug fixes are dedicated to improving the overall stability and resilience of PostgreSQL for everyone in the community.

Technical contributions: July 2025 – December 2025

The following sections detail technical enhancements and bug fixes contributed to the PostgreSQL open source project between July 2025 and December 2025. Primary engineering efforts were dedicated to advancing logical replication toward active-active capabilities, implementing missing features, optimizing pg_upgrade, and fixing bugs.

Logical Replication Enhancements

Logical replication is a critical feature of PostgreSQL enabling capabilities like near zero down time, major version upgrades, selective replication, active-active replication. We have been working towards closing some of the key gaps.

Automatic Conflict Detection

Active-active replication is a mechanism for increasing PostgreSQL write scalability. One of the most significant hurdles for active-active PostgreSQL setups is handling row-level conflicts when the same data is modified on two different nodes. Historically, these conflicts could stall replication, requiring manual intervention.

In this cycle, the community committed Automatic Conflict Detection which is the first phase of Automatic Conflict Detection and Resolution. This foundation allows the replication worker to automatically detect when an incoming change (Insert, Update, or Delete) conflicts with the local state.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar helped by performing code and design reviews. He is currently advancing the project's second phase, focusing on implementing conflict logging into a dedicated log table.

Logical replication of sequences

Until recently, logical replication in PostgreSQL was primarily limited to table data. Sequences did not synchronize automatically. This meant that during a migration or a major version upgrade, DBAs had to manually sync sequence values to prevent "duplicate key" errors on the new primary node. Since many databases rely on sequences, this was a significant hurdle for logical replication.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar helped by performing code and design reviews.

Drop subscription deadlock

The DROP SUBSCRIPTION command previously held an exclusive lock while connecting to the publisher to delete a replication slot.

If the publisher was a new database on the same server, the connection process would stall while trying to access that same locked catalog.

This conflict created a "self-deadlock," where the command was essentially waiting for itself to finish.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar analyzed and authored the fix.

Upgrade Resilience

Operational ease of use and friction-less upgrades are important to PostgreSQL users. We have been working on improving the upgrade experience.

pg_upgrade optimization for Large Objects

For databases with massive volumes of Large Objects, upgrades could previously span several days. This bottleneck is resolved by exporting the underlying data table directly rather than executing individual Large Object commands, resulting in an upgrade process that is several orders of magnitude faster.

Contributors: Hannu Krosing, Nitin Motiani and, Saurabh Uttam, highlighted the severity of the issue, proposed the initial fix and actively drove it to the resolution.

Prevent logical slot invalidation during upgrade:

Upgrade to PG17 fails if max_slot_wal_keep_size is not set to -1. This fix improves pg_upgrade's resilience, eliminating the need for users to manually set max_slot_wal_keep_size to -1. The server now automatically retains the necessary WAL data for upgrading logical replication slots, simplifying the upgrade process and reducing the risk of errors.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar analyzed and authored the fix.

pg_upgrade NOT NULL constraint related bug fix

A bug in pg_dump previously failed to preserve non-inherited NOT NULL constraints on inherited columns during upgrades from version 17 or older.

The fix updates the underlying query to ensure these specific schema constraints are correctly identified and migrated during the pg_upgrade process.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar analyzed and authored the fix.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

We continue to contribute bug fixes to help improve the stability and quality of PostgreSQL.

Make pgstattuple more robust about empty or invalid index pages

pgstattuple is a PostgreSQL extension for analyzing the physical storage of tables and indexes at the row (tuple) level, to determine whether a table is in need of maintenance. However, pgstattuple would raise errors with empty or invalid index pages in hash and gist code. This bug handles the empty and invalid index pages to make pgstattuple more robust.

Contributors: Nitin Motiani and Dilip Kumar, participated as author and reviewer.

Loading extension from different path

A bug incorrectly stripped the prefix from nested module paths when dynamically loading shared library files. This caused libraries in subdirectories to fail to load. The bug fix ensures the prefix is only removed for simple filenames, allowing the dynamic library expander to correctly find nested paths

Contributors: Dilip Kumar, reported and co-authored the fix for this bug.

WAL flush logic hardening

XLogFlush() and XLogNeedsFlush() are internal PostgreSQL functions that ensure log records are written to the WAL to ensure durability. In certain edge cases, like the end-of-recovery checkpoint, the functions relied on inconsistent criteria to decide which code path to follow. This inconsistency posed a risk for upcoming features i.e. Asynchronous I/O for writes that require XLogNeedsFlush() to work reliably.

Contributors: Dilip Kumar, co-authored the fix for this bug.

Major Features in Development

Beyond our recent commits, the team is actively working on several high-impact proposals to further strengthen the PostgreSQL ecosystem.

  • Conflict Log Table for Detection: Dilip Kumar is developing a proposal for a conflict log table designed to offer a queryable, structured record of all logical replication conflicts. This feature would include a configuration option to determine whether conflict details are recorded in the history table, server logs, or both.
  • Adding pg_dump flag for parallel export to pipes: Nitin Motiani is working on this feature. This introduces a flag which allows the user to provide pipe commands while doing parallel export/import from pg_dump/pg_restore (in directory format).

Leadership

Beyond code, our team supports the ecosystem through community leadership. We are pleased to share that Dilip Kumar has been selected for the PGConf.dev 2026 Program Committee to help shape the project's premier developer conference.

Community Roadmap: Your Feedback Matters

We encourage you to utilize the comments area to propose new capabilities or refinements you wish to see in future iterations, and to identify key areas where the PostgreSQL open-source community should focus its investments.

Acknowledgement

We want to thank our open source contributors for their dedication to improving the upstream project.

Dilip Kumar: PostgreSQL significant contributor

Hannu Krosing: PostgreSQL significant contributor

Nitin Motiani: Contributing features and bug fixes

Saurabh Uttam: Contributing bug fixes

We also extend our sincere gratitude to the wider PostgreSQL open source members, especially the committers and reviewers, for their guidance, reviews, and for collaborating with us to make PostgreSQL the most advanced open source database in the world.