Roadmap
The Backstage Roadmap
Backstage is currently under rapid development. This page details the project's public roadmap, the result of ongoing collaboration between the core maintainers and the broader Backstage community.
The Backstage roadmap lays out both “what's next” and "future work". With "next" we mean features planned for release within the ongoing quarter from July through September 2022. With "future" we mean features on the radar, but not yet scheduled.
| What's next | Future work |
|---|---|
| Backend Services (MVP) Backstage Security Audit Backstage Threat Model Software Catalog pagination More SIGs | Ease of onboarding Composable Homepage 1.0 Creator experience GraphQL Telemetry |
The long-term roadmap (12 - 36 months) is not detailed in the public roadmap. Third-party contributions are also not currently included in the roadmap. Let us know about any ongoing developments and we're happy to include them here as well.
What's next
The feature set below is planned for the ongoing quarter, and grouped by theme. The list order doesn't necessarily reflect priority, and the development/release cycle will vary based on maintainer schedules.
Backend Services (MVP)
To better scale and maintain the Backstage instances, a backend services system is planned to be introduced as part of the software architecture. This layer of backend services will help in decoupling the various modules (e.g. Catalog and Scaffolder) from the frontend experience.
After the experimentation and design happened in the past quarter, soon we plan to release a first version to start providing the first benefits to adopters and developers.
Backstage Security Audit
This is the continuation of the initiative started in the previous quarters. This quarter will see the publication of the report describing the outcome of the audit, together the first fixes and the development of some of the changes required to address the vulnerabilities.
This initiative is the first of a broader Security Strategy for Backstage. The purpose of the Security Audit is to involve third-party companies in auditing the platform. The benefit for the adopters is clear: we want Backstage to be as secure as possible, and we want to make it reliable through a specific initiative.
This initiative is done together with, and with the support of, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
Backstage Threat Model
This is another (relevant) initiative planned to make Backstage a secure product for the adopters. The goals of this initiative are:
- Understand where security investment and attention is needed.
- Guide the upcoming security audit.
- Communicate expectations to Backstage adopters and inform and attract security researchers.
The planned artifacts are:
- Concise high level threat model that will be included as part of the Backstage security documentation.
- Granular threat model created in conjunction with the security audit to inform further security investment areas for Backstage.
Software Catalog pagination
Today adopters with a big catalog (with several thousands of software components) might not have an ideal end-user experience when viewing the /catalog page. The issue is related to how the entities are fetched by the frontend. In order to provide a better end-user experience the pagination of the catalog’s entities needs to be enforced. Some experimentation is already completed but in this quarter we plan to continue, and hopefully complete, this relevant enhancement.
More SIGs
In the last quarter we launched the Catalog SIG (Special Interest Group) to better coordinate the increasing number of contributions to the project. We think that this is the proper path to follow to engage more with the contributors. For this reason we will launch other SIGs dedicated to the most interesting topics for the community.
Future work
The following feature list doesn't represent a commitment to develop, and the list order doesn't reflect any priority or importance, but these features are on the maintainers' radar, with clear interest expressed by the community.
- Ease of onboarding: A faster (with less development) and easier setup of Backstage and the most relevant/adopted plugins.
- Composable Homepage 1.0: Driving this to 1.0 by adding some composable components.
- Creator experience: Provide a better Backstage user experience through visual guidelines and templates, especially navigation across plug-ins and portal functionalities.
- GraphQL support: Introduce the ability to query Backstage backend services with a standard query language for APIs.
- Telemetry: To efficiently generate logging and metrics in such a way that adopters can get insights so that Backstage can be monitored and improved.
How to influence the roadmap
As we evolve Backstage, we want you to contribute actively in the journey to define the most effective developer experience in the world.
A roadmap is only useful if it captures real needs. If you have success stories, feedback, or ideas, we want to hear from you! If you plan to work (or are already working) on a new or existing feature, please let us know, so that we can update the roadmap accordingly. We are also happy to share knowledge and context that will help your feature land successfully.
You can also head over to the CONTRIBUTING guidelines to get started.
If you have specific questions about the roadmap, please create an issue, ping us on Discord, or book time with the Spotify team.