Features 🚀

• TALA is now open source and bundled with D2, including the JavaScript/WASM package. Select it with d2 --layout=tala, D2_LAYOUT=tala, or vars.d2-config.layout-engine: tala. No separate plugin installation or license key is required.
• tala: configure layout attempts with --tala-seeds, D2_TALA_SEEDS, or vars.d2-config.data.tala-seeds.
• exports: render PNG, GIF, PDF, and PPTX with the built-in renderer

Improvements 🧹

• performance: reduce repeated work in Dagre ranking, text measurement, SVG preparation, and PNG encoding
• performance: reduce repeated work in selective imports, dynamic grid layout, and PNG connection rendering
• exports: reduce PNG memory usage and support images above the previous 67-megapixel limit
• performance: SVG rendering is approximately 10× faster across the E2E corpus. Real-world diagrams compile, lay out, and render approximately 3× faster at the median.
• renders: SVG exports are approximately 24% smaller across the E2E corpus and 18% smaller across real-world fixtures, with unchanged appearance.
• renders: render Markdown labels as native SVG instead of HTML foreignObject content

Bugfixes ⛑️

• install: reject the obsolete --tala installer flag with migration guidance before installing, instead of incorrectly claiming that older D2 releases bundle TALA
• sequence diagrams: keep synthetic lifeline endpoint IDs stable across architectures
• exports: honor D2_TIMEOUT during PNG and GIF rendering
• compiler: keep recursive globs out of class and variable definitions and report class reference cycles instead of overflowing the stack
• renders: decode gzip, Brotli, and deflate remote images before embedding them

For the latest d2.js changes, see separate changelog.

Features 🚀

• exports: gif exports work with animate: true keyword #2663

Improvements 🧹

• releases: strip native binaries, build and smoke-test all six archives in CI, produce reproducible archives with checksums, signed provenance, and SBOM attestations, and verify standalone downloads when GitHub provides a digest
• plugins: make render post-processing optional and deprecate it for removal after one protocol compatibility cycle; legacy external postprocess commands remain supported during the transition
• api: deprecate legacy layout-feature constants, raw-WASM ELK/object-order bridges, unused public wrappers, and test-only comparison, validation, and logging helpers; compatibility entry points remain callable for one release while in-repository callers use supported or internal replacements
• maintenance: update the Go toolchain to 1.27.0 and refresh Go, d2.js, CI, release dependencies, and compression-sensitive snapshots
• renders: update syntax highlighting and migrate archived font and PDF dependencies to maintained replacements
• d2dagre: replace the embedded JavaScript runtime with native Go Dagro and update its D2-used layout surface from Dagre 0.8.5 to Dagre 3.1.1 behavior. This intentionally changes node ordering and coordinates, edge routes, self-loops, and compound sizing in some diagrams; regenerate and review stored SVG or board-JSON snapshots
• d2sketch: update the native rough-go renderer from Rough.js 4.0.4 to 4.6.6 behavior. Seeded sketch strokes, fills, arrowheads, and SVG paths may change; regenerate and review stored sketch SVG snapshots
• d2elk: replace the embedded ELK.js 0.8.2 runtime with native Go elk-go and update D2's ELK layout profile to ELK.js 0.12.0 behavior. This is a layout-behavior update, not an output-compatible runtime swap:
  • existing ELK diagrams may receive different node coordinates and ordering, edge and label routes, and component packing; regenerate and review stored SVG or board-JSON snapshots
  • children of nested compound graphs may be reordered because ELK 0.12 cannot safely apply D2's previous nested model-order profile
  • non-default --elk-algorithm modes may also produce different geometry; the optional DisCo algorithm is removed because upstream no longer bundles it
• d2latex: replace the embedded MathJax JavaScript runtime with the native Go mathjax-go port without changing rendered formulas
• performance: native Go engine migrations substantially reduce median end-to-end D2-to-SVG conversion time in Apple M4 benchmarks:
  • Dagre is 7–9× faster
  • ELK is 40–53× faster
  • LaTeX is 21.6× faster on a four-formula diagram
• performance: remove superlinear compiler and layout bottlenecks in large globs, repeated imports, nested diagrams, compound Dagre graphs, bend-heavy ELK layouts, and style-only scenario/step boards #2827. Median Apple M4 single-CPU synthetic stress benchmarks for these targeted cliffs, rather than corpus-wide conversion averages, improve by:
  • leading glob applied to 1,000 fields: 1.59s to 12ms (~133× faster)
  • 100 references into the same 100-field import file: 54ms to 12ms (~4.6× faster)
  • 4,000 flat fields: 67ms to 7ms (~9.6× faster)
  • 3,200 distinct edges: 200ms to 19ms (~10.6× faster)
  • 32-node base with 8 style-only scenarios and 8 steps (17 boards total): 40ms to 7.3ms (~5.5× faster)
  • 340-object nested D2 Dagre layout: 1.30s to 0.88s (~32% faster)
  • Dagro depth-100 compound layout: 3.60s to 0.90s (~4× faster)
  • 250-node, 1,000-edge ELK layout: 337ms to 238ms (~30% faster)
• d2ascii:
  • sql_table and uml class shapes are supported #2623
  • newlines are handled #2626
  • empty left columns are cropped #2626
• exports:
  • Chromium download through CLI for PNG exports is prompted #2655
  • animate-interval is no longer required, defaults to 1000ms for gifs #2663
• renders:
  • remote images are fetched more reliably #2659

Bugfixes ⛑️

• d2dagre: keep same-direction parallel edges and self-loop routes finite when using Dagre 3.1.1 behavior
• d2svg: reject padding that would produce invalid negative SVG dimensions
• d2elk: route ancestor-to-descendant connections around intermediate containers
• d2elk: prevent labels on multiple self-loops from overlapping in right-directed layouts, including the ent2d2_right regression case
• d2svg: render one-stop gradients with finite SVG offsets
• compiler: make suffix globs match only names with the requested suffix
• compiler: reject non-finite opacity values with a source diagnostic
• d2svg: preserve connection links on LaTeX, Markdown, and code labels
• d2lib: preserve caller-supplied light and dark theme overrides over source configuration
• compiler: index equivalent connections consistently when endpoint notation is reversed
• exports: pptx follows standards more closely, addressing warnings from some Powerpoint software #2645
• d2sequence: fix edge case of invalid sequence diagrams #2660
• d2svg: Text may overflow legend bounds when monospace font is used #2674

For the latest d2.js changes, see separate changelog.

Correct the source-build version after the module-path cutover.

First release of the github.com/d2lang/d2 module path.