Hi All, I'd like to open the vote for KIP-62. This proposal attempts to address one of the recurring usability problems that users of the new consumer have faced with as little impact as possible. You can read the full details here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-62%3A+Allow+consumer+to+send+heartbeats+from+a+background+thread .
After some discussion on this list, I think we were in agreement that this change addresses a major part of the problem and we've left the door open for further improvements, such as adding a heartbeat() API or a separately configured rebalance timeout. Thanks in advance to everyone who helped review the proposal. -Jason
