What’s new in Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.10

June 2, 2025
Ivo Bek
Related topics:
APIsData integrationIntegrationQuarkusSpring Boot
Related products:
Red Hat build of Apache Camel

Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.10 is an industry-proven, highly adaptable, lightweight toolkit designed for enterprise integration, offering key advantages in flexibility and performance. This release introduces enhanced integration capabilities with new and updated components, improved developer tooling through Camel JBang and Kaoto, unified observability via the new Camel Observability Services, and expanded support for cloud platforms and messaging systems.

Apache Camel enhancements

Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.10 introduces several enhancements and updates to the framework.

Red Hat refined and added support for the following components: 

  • Smooks data format to transform, route, and bind both XML and non-XML data, including EDI, CSV, JSON, and YAML
  • Observability services component designed to simplify and unify observability in cloud-based microservices architectures
  • From tech-preview to full support in Quarkus - Kubernetes, Azure Servicebus, Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, BeanIO, Flink, JQ, Google Secrets Manager
  • SSH to execute commands on remote hosts using SSH
  • Olingo4 in Quarkus to communicate with OData 4.0 services using Apache Olingo OData API
  • CICS in Quarkus to interact with IBM CICS® general-purpose transaction processing subsystem
  • Jolokia in Quarkus to expose runtime metrics and management operations via JMX

For the full list of supported components, check the reference guides in the product documentation.

Several improvements were also made to already supported components such as:

  • camel-kubernetes can auto-reload Camel on configmap updates (just as it was possible with secrets)
  • camel-http supports caching and refreshing OAuth2 tokens. It also added a new logHttpActivity option to log all HTTP request/response messages.
  • camel-jms filters out CamelXXX headers by default as done by other Camel components
  • camel-amqp offers simplified SSL/TLS configuration
  • camel-micrometer fixed uncontrolled growth of endpoint events with dynamic endpoints. By default, metrics now use the base URI. To revert to full URI (not recommended), set camel.metrics.baseEndpointURIExchangeEventNotifier=false
  • camel-kafka fixed minor performance issues in record metadata evaluation and added pollIntervalMs to let batching mode complete partial groups after a set time
  • camel-opentelemetry fixed issues in relation to leaking spans when routing
  • camel-mllp now supports TLS/SSL
  • camel-mock can use JSonPath, JQ, XPath, Simple and other languages to set expectations.
  • camel-platform-http improved multipart file upload handling across runtimes. Files go to camel-attachments, with easier access from Java, Simple, and Groovy. Single file uploads auto-populate body and CamelFile* headers. A built-in MIME detector now assigns accurate content types (e.g., XML, JSON, images) instead of defaulting to application/octet-stream.
  • Camel Platform HTTP Starter now fully implements Camel REST configuration and enforces REST best practices. Key changes include strict Content-Type validation (returns 415 on mismatch), improved request/response handling, streaming support, CORS, URI matching, form handling, cookies, headers, and optimized response writing.

New startup conditions can block startup until checks pass, e.g., ENV exists or a file is present.

camel.startupcondition.enabled = true
camel.startupcondition.fileExists = /opt/app/ready.flag

Global configuration of data formats in YAML and XML IO DSL.

ENV variable config now supports flexible, human-friendly formats: 

CAMEL_KAMELET_AWS_S3_SOURCE_BUCKETNAMEORARN=arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket
CAMEL_KAMELET_AWS_S3_SOURCE_BUCKET_NAME_OR_ARN=arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket

Both map to:

camel.kamelet.aws-s3-source.bucket-name-or-arn

Also works for components like CAMEL_COMPONENT_AWS2_S3_BUCKET_NAME_OR_ARN.

Added camel.ssl.trustAllCertificates to simplify TLS/SSL setup during development.

New customize function in RouteBuilder simplifies in-line Java configuration of Camel components for low-code users:

@Override
public void configure() throws Exception {
    customize(HttpComponent.class, http -> {
        http.setConnectionTimeToLive(10000);
        http.setMaxTotalConnections(100);
        http.setFollowRedirects(true);
    });
    from("timer:httpExample?repeatCount=1")
        .to("http://localhost:8080/hello")
        .log("${body}");
}

Camel Groovy language aligned syntax with Simple language for consistent access to exchange, headers, and variables. Log EIP now supports Groovy via camel.main.logLanguage=groovy, ideal for low-code users.

Camel Kamelets can now call other Kamelets. Error handling is aligned with standard Camel behavior, including support for bridgeErrorHandler.

Camel can configure beans using property placeholders from secure vaults, e.g., {{hashicorp:secret:database#username}} and vault-based placeholders like {{aws:myDatabasePassword}} now work in Spring configs (e.g., spring.datasource.password).

Enhanced integration design and developer experience in Kaoto

Kaoto for Apache Camel has been significantly improved to accelerate integration development in VS Code. You can now manage the full integration lifecycle when prototyping—design, run, pause, stop, and deploy—all within the Kaoto view. A key priority for the next iteration is delivering the same experience for established Maven-based projects, with tighter integration and increased automation.

To support diverse development styles, Kaoto now lets you define integrations in both YAML and XML IO DSLs. It also introduces documentation generation from Camel routes, making it easier to share and understand your workflows.

The Kaoto DataMapper has been enhanced with support for multiple mappings on collection fields, improved drag-and-drop usability, and an upgrade to XSLT v3 for more powerful transformations.

A new Kaoto Form engine improves form interactions with smarter field behavior, keyboard navigation, dropdown filtering, and the ability to wrap values using RAW(). Finally, Kaoto now supports dark mode for a more comfortable experience in low-light environments (Figure 1).

Kaoto 2.6
Figure 1: Kaoto dark mode.

These updates solidify Kaoto as a powerful and user-friendly integration designer for Apache Camel, catering to diverse developer needs while enabling faster and more efficient integration design.

Unified observability with Camel Observability Services

The camel-observability-services component is designed to simplify and unify observability in cloud-based microservices architectures. Previously, each runtime (Main, Quarkus, Spring Boot) required separate, inconsistent configuration for health, metrics, and telemetry components. This new module standardizes and harmonizes observability setup across runtimes, offering out-of-the-box integration for:

  • camel-health
  • camel-management
  • camel-micrometer-prometheus
  • camel-opentelemetry

This approach enables faster, consistent deployment and monitoring of Camel applications in cloud environments.

Note: camel-observability-services will power Camel Workspace (a new Camel dashboard and HawtIO dynamic plug-ins currently in development planned for release by end of 2025) directly integrated into the OpenShift Console.

Camel JBang integration accelerator enhancements

This release boosts Camel development with powerful new features:

  • Container-ready projects: Maven exports now include Dockerfiles for fast container builds.

  • Interactive messaging: Use camel receive command to consume messages (e.g., from Kafka) and camel browse command to peek into queues without consuming (JMS, file, FTP).

  • Kubernetes improvements: camel kubernetes plug-in aligned support for all runtimes (Main, Quarkus, Spring Boot), with:

    • --name to define integration names
    • Refined --quiet mode (errors only)
    • New --verbose mode (full build logs)
  • Smarter debugging: debug now supports step in and step over, improving flow inspection (e.g., inside a splitter).

  • Test infrastructure support: camel infra command gives access to infrastructure services for development purposes (Figure 2) :

    • infra list – view available services
    • infra run ftp – starts service and returns JSON with dynamic config
Camel Infra cmd
Figure 2: Accessing infrastructure services with the camel infra command.

  • Simplified upgrades: The camel update command automates version upgrades using OpenRewrite:

    • update list – shows available versions

Artemis plug-in for HawtIO

This release introduces a new Artemis plug-in for HawtIO, purpose-built for managing Red Hat AMQ Broker. The plug-in offers a web-based interface to monitor and control Artemis brokers directly from the HawtIO console (Figure 3).

Artemis plugin for HawtIO
Figure 3: The HawtIO console.

Key features include browsing and managing queues, sending and receiving test messages, inspecting connections and consumers, and performing administrative actions such as pausing, resuming, or purging queues. Designed for operational efficiency, the plug-in integrates with the latest AMQ Broker (7.13) capabilities, giving users enhanced visibility and control over their messaging infrastructure.

Next steps

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