Keeping Backstage Updated
Audience: Developers and Admins
To better understand the concepts in this section, it's recommended to have an understanding of Monorepos, Semantic Versioning and CHANGELOGs.
Summary
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:bump.
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.
To make the the version bump process even easier and more streamlined we highly recommend using the Backstage yarn plugin
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.
Managing package versions with the Backstage yarn plugin
The Backstage yarn plugin makes it easier to manage Backstage package versions,
by determining the appropriate version for each package based on the overall
Backstage version in backstage.json. This avoids the need to update every
package.json across your Backstage monorepo, and means that when adding new
@backstage dependencies, you don't need to worry about figuring out the right
version to use to match the currently-installed release of Backstage.
Requirements
In order to use the yarn plugin, you'll need to be using yarn 4.1.1 or greater.
Installation
To install the yarn plugin, run the following command in your Backstage monorepo:
yarn plugin import https://versions.backstage.io/v1/tags/main/yarn-plugin
The resulting changes in the file system should be committed to your repo.
For best results it's ideal to add the Backstage Yarn plugin when you are about to do a Backstage upgrade as it will make it easier to confirm everything is working.
Usage
When the yarn plugin is installed, versions for currently-released @backstage
packages can be replaced in package.json with the string "backstage:^". This
instructs yarn to resolve the version based on the overall Backstage version in
backstage.json.
The backstage.json is key for the plugin to work, make sure this file is included in your CI/CD pipelines and/or any Container builds.
The backstage-cli versions:bump command documented above will detect the
installation of the yarn plugin, and when it's installed, will automatically
migrate dependencies across the monorepo to use it.
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 multiple versions of the same package being installed and used
in the same app.
All Backstage core packages are implemented in such as way that package
duplication is not a problem. For example, duplicate installations of
packages like @backstage/core-plugin-api, @backstage/core-components,
@backstage/plugin-catalog-react, and @backstage/backend-plugin-api are all
acceptable.
While package duplication might be acceptable in many cases, you might want to
deduplicate packages for the purpose of optimizing bundle size and installation
speed. We recommend using deduplication utilities such as yarn dedupe to trim
down the number of duplicate packages.
Proxy
The Backstage CLI uses global-agent to configure HTTP/HTTPS proxy settings using environment variables. This allows you to route the CLI’s network traffic through a proxy server, which can be useful in environments with restricted internet access.
Example Configuration
export GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.company.com:8080
export GLOBAL_AGENT_HTTPS_PROXY=https://secure-proxy.company.com:8080
export GLOBAL_AGENT_NO_PROXY=localhost,internal.company.com