Release note — messaging family, 2026-10-21
What the messaging family covers at first release, the three subscription types that delete a consumer service, the one-to-three name mapping that explains the whole family, and what is known to be missing.
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Messaging family — first release
Added
| Document | What it carries |
|---|---|
reference/messaging/pubsub.md | four objects, five subscription types, at-least-once by default, ordering keys, dead-letter topics |
reference/messaging/cloud-tasks.md | queue-as-policy, two target types, the three controls, and when to choose it over Pub/Sub |
reference/messaging/eventarc.md | CloudEvents, the Cloud Audit Logs source, the destinations, Standard against Advanced |
reference/messaging/errors.md | the six failures that are usually a contract misunderstanding |
guides/messaging/deliver-pubsub-to-cloud-run.md | six steps, ending in a deliberate failure test |
guides/parity/messaging.md | the one-to-three mapping, the partition question, and the consumers Pub/Sub deletes |
The headline facts
- Three Pub/Sub subscription types write into BigQuery, Bigtable or Cloud Storage with no code. Finding
the equivalent consumer in a source architecture and deleting it is the most commonly missed saving in a messaging migration.
- Microsoft's own table maps Pub/Sub to three Azure services. That is the family's whole shape: one
Google Cloud product against two or three elsewhere.
Absences and hedges recorded rather than filled in
- The Pub/Sub overview states no default message retention, so none is quoted; the error catalogue says to
read it from the subscription.
- Pub/Sub Lite is referenced only as a separate documentation set. Nothing about its status is claimed.
- The Cloud Tasks overview does not compare itself to Pub/Sub; the choose-between rule in
reference/messaging/cloud-tasks.md §4 is labelled as the hub's reading.
Known missing
- Cloud Scheduler and Workflows, both named in the parity table and not documented.
- Pub/Sub schema evolution, snapshots and seek (replay).
- Subscription filtering.
- Service-to-service authentication details for push endpoints beyond the invoker role.
- Eventarc Advanced pipeline configuration.