Keeping Backstage Updated
Backstage is always improving, so it's a good idea to stay in sync with the
latest releases. Backstage is more of a library than an application or service;
similar to create-react-app
, the @backstage/create-app
tool gives you a
starting point that's meant to be evolved.
Updating Backstage versions with backstage-cli
The Backstage CLI has a command to bump all @backstage
packages and
dependencies you're using to the latest versions:
versions
yarn backstage-cli versions:bump
The reason for bumping all @backstage
packages at once is to maintain the
dependencies that they have between each other.
By default the bump command will upgrade @backstage
packages to the latest main
release line which is released monthly. For those in a hurry that want to track the next
release line which releases weekly can do so using the --release next
option.
yarn backstage-cli versions:bump --release next
If you are using other plugins you can pass in the --pattern
option to update
more than just the @backstage/*
dependencies.
yarn backstage-cli versions:bump --pattern '@{backstage,roadiehq}/*'
Following create-app template changes
The @backstage/create-app
command creates the initial structure of your
Backstage installation from a template. The source of this template in the
Backstage repository is updated periodically, but your local app
and backend
packages are established at create-app
time and won't automatically get these
template updates.
For this reason, any changes made to the template are documented along with
upgrade instructions in the
changelog
of the @backstage/create-app
package. We recommend peeking at this changelog
for any applicable updates when upgrading packages. As an alternative, the
Backstage Upgrade Helper provides
a consolidated view of all the changes between two versions of Backstage. You
can find the current version of your Backstage installation in backstage.json
.
More information on dependency mismatches
Backstage is structured as a monorepo with
Yarn workspaces. This means
the app
and backend
packages, as well as any custom plugins you've added,
are separate packages with their own package.json
and dependencies.
When a given dependency version is the same between different packages, the
dependency is hoisted to the main node_modules
folder in the monorepo root to
be shared between packages. When different versions of the same dependency are
encountered, Yarn creates a node_modules
folder within a particular package.
This can lead to confusing situations with type definitions, or anything with global state. React Context, for example, depends on global referential equality. This can cause problems in Backstage with API lookup, or config loading.
To help resolve these situations, the Backstage CLI has versions
. This will validate versions of@backstage
packages in your app to check for
duplicate definitions:
# Add --fix to attempt automatic resolution in yarn.lock
yarn backstage-cli versions:check