v1.18.0 Optimization, fixes and up performance

AbstractMenus 1.18.0

First release after the performance overhaul. The typical menu refresh path is 3–5× cheaper on the main thread than in 1.17.8, and the MiniMessage pipeline no longer shows up in Spark profiles of normal workloads. Existing HOCON configs load unchanged.

🔥 Highlights

Hot frame on the bench workload	1.17.8 (baseline)	1.18.0	Δ
MenuManager$UpdateTask.run	1.04 %	0.33 %	3.2×
SimpleItem.applyProperties	0.99 %	0.20 %	5×
MiniMessageUtil$ActiveReplacer.parseToLegacy	0.40 %	not in top	gone
MiniMessageImpl.deserialize	0.36 %	not in top	gone
PlaceholderAPI.setPlaceholders	0.67 %	not in top	gone

Inclusive sample percentages from Spark, same Paper 1.21.11 server, same bench-menu workload, same alt accounts. Linear extrapolation to 50 simultaneous players puts the menu path from ~52 % of main-thread CPU down to ~16 %.

✨ Added

• Pre-compute for static names & lore in PropName / PropLore - fully-static text is converted through MiniMessage once at load and cached; refreshes skip PAPI + MiniMessage entirely for those items.
• Copy-on-write item cloning — SimpleItem.clone() now shares property-map references with the template; only addProperty / removeProperty / setProperties trigger the real deep copy.
• Skull caches — Skulls.getPlayerSkull(name) now caches by lowercased name, invalidated on PlayerJoinEvent. PropHDB reuses a single HeadDatabaseAPI instance instead of allocating one per render.
• Player reference cache in MenuManager.UpdateTask — no more Bukkit.getPlayer(uuid) lookup per open menu per tick.
• Bench harness — src/main/resources/bench-menus/ contains 10 reference menus and a README that stress each hot path for Spark / JMH measurements. JMH micro-benchmarks live under src/test/java/ru/abstractmenus/bench/.
• GitHub Actions — build + release workflows under .github/workflows/, with JUnit test report publishing, shaded-JAR artifacts, and automatic JAR attachment to GitHub releases.
• Test suite — ~190 unit + integration tests covering util classes, datatype deserializers, compound HOCON serializers, the CoW item contract, the MiniMessage legacy path, and Mockito-based regression pinning.

🛠 Changed

• MiniMessage legacy color replacement rewritten from O(K×N) to O(N) - single-pass appendReplacement, fast-path returns the same input reference when no § codes are present. Extracted into LegacyColorTagReplacer so the logic is unit-testable without Adventure service-loader collisions.
• Frame.play() returns built ItemStacks directly — eliminates the second item.build(...) pass that AnimatedMenu.update() used to run, cutting per-frame work roughly in half.
• Dependency bumps: Paperweight beta.21, Adventure MiniMessage 4.26.1, Lombok 1.18.44, item-nbt-api 2.15.7, PlaceholderAPI 2.12.2, LuckPerms 5.5, shadow 9.4.1, ProGuard 7.9.1, JUnit Jupiter 5.14.3, VaultAPI 1.7.1, FoliaLib 0.4.4.
• Low-hanging perf fixes: PropData.apply dedups double getByte(), GeneratedMenu.open drops a duplicate snapshot, OpenSign uses Tag.SIGNS, StringUtil.replaceKeyPrefix no longer compiles a regex per call, Server/BungeePlaceholders replace split + Arrays.copyOfRange + String.join with a single substring.
• Lombok-ified trivial data holders (Tuple, EntityData, PropBindings.BindGroup, LegacyValueComparator.Comparator, DataType) — −44 lines of hand-rolled getters/setters.

🐛 Fixed

• OpenSign left-click regression — inverted click-type guard disabled left clicks; both clicks work again. Also removes an IndexOutOfBoundsException on sign configs with >4 lines and uses a safe instanceof Sign pattern instead of an unchecked cast.
• ActionCommand chat-event cycle — switched to player.performCommand(...) from player.chat("/" + cmd); avoids re-triggering OpenChat activators and removes a double placeholder pass.
• PropSkullOwner unconditional Logger.severe — used to fire on every successful render. Now only on the null branch, downgraded to warning.
• MojangApi connection / scanner leaks — HttpURLConnection is disconnected on IOException and Scanner is wrapped in try-with-resources.
• BungeeManager.pingTask main-thread violation - sendPluginMessage is now dispatched through the Bukkit scheduler (was called from a raw ScheduledExecutorService).
• MenuManager.serve watcher thread — daemonised, joined on disable; loadFile from the watcher dispatches back to the main thread via BukkitTasks.runTask.
• ProfileStorage.onPlayerJoin threading — Bukkit API calls moved to the main thread; only the Mojang HTTP fetch stays async.

📝 Docs

• README refreshed with the current feature list, requirements, architecture diagram, bench pack pointer, and contributor section.
• PR_DESCRIPTION.md documents the performance wave in detail - per-commit breakdown, before/after numbers, caveats.
• .github/RELEASE.md spells out the release flow the new workflows enable.

⚠️ Caveats

• Sound IDs on Paper 1.21.x — Registry.SOUNDS.get(NamespacedKey.fromString(...)) rejects the old uppercase enum-style sound IDs (UI_BUTTON_CLICK, BLOCK_NOTE_BLOCK_CHIME). Configs need the lowercase dotted form (ui.button.click, block.note_block.chime). Update your menus or copy from bench-menus/_templates.conf.
• MockBukkit integration tests are @Disabled — MockBukkit 4.108 and Paper 1.21.11 collide during registry bootstrap. The skeleton is checked in and will re-enable once either side closes the ordering.

🙌 Contributors

Thanks to everyone who shipped this release:

• @Nan1t — original author, architectural guidance
• @BrainRTP — performance wave, test suite, bench harness, CI
• @WhyZerVellasskx — modern colorize path, keyed enchantment support, PAPI tag resolver, multi-placeholder fixes, 1.21.4 support, release automation groundwork

See the full contributor graph for everyone who has ever touched the code.

📦 Install

Drop AbstractMenus-1.18.0.jar into plugins/ on Paper 1.20.6 – 1.21.11 (Folia supported). Soft-deps: PlaceholderAPI, Vault + an economy plugin, LuckPerms — none required, all hooks degrade gracefully if missing.

v1.17.5-beta

What's Changed

• Fix some bugs and cleaning code by @WhyZerVellasskx in #6
• Add support 1.21.4 by @WhyZerVellasskx in #9

New Contributors

• @WhyZerVellasskx made their first contribution in #6

Full Changelog: https://github.com/AbstractMenus/minecraft-plugin/commits/v1.17.5-beta