Johan Haals
7.3 KiB
id, title, description
| id | title | description |
|---|---|---|
| roadmap | Roadmap | Roadmap of Backstage |
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 April through June 2022. With "future" we mean features on the radar, but not yet scheduled.
| What's next | Future work |
|---|---|
| Ease of onboarding Backstage Search 1.0 TechDocs Addon Framework Backend Services (initial) Backstage Security Audit SIGs for contributors |
Security Plan (and Strategy) Composable Homepage 1.0 GraphQL Telemetry Improved UX design |
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.
Ease of onboarding
A faster (with less development) and easier setup of a proof-of-concept deployment, as part of the onboarding experience, has been a common and loud suggestion from new adopters as well as analysts looking at Backstage.
With this initiative we plan to start facing this important topic with the most commonly used and challenging tasks. More in particular we plan to reduce the effort required to go from zero to production in installing and customizing Backstage, as well as reducing the effort required to populate the Software Catalog.
More iterations will be required in the following quarters, but this will be a good improvement in the onboarding experience, especially for the benefit of new adopters.
Backstage Search 1.0
Fix the few remaining issues to get Backstage Search platform up to 1.0. For more information, see the Backstage Search documentation and roadmap page.
TechDocs Addon Framework
Addons are TechDocs features that are added on top of the base docs-like-code experience. An example would be a feature that showed comments on the page. We plan to add an Addon framework and open source a selection of the Addons that we use internally at Spotify. We encourage the Backstage community to add further Addons.
For more information about the TechDocs Addon Framework, see the documentation page here
For general information about TechDocs including roadmap, see here.
Backend Services (initial)
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.
In this quarter we plan to start designing the new architecture, together with the first experimentation and development of the software components.
Backstage Security Audit
This is the continuation of the initiative started in the previous quarter. 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).
SIGs for contributors
The request to better coordinate the increasing number of contributions coming from the various adopters' developers is loud and clear. We think that the community is mature enough to start launching the SIGs (Special Interest Groups) following the successful model of Kubernetes.
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.
- Security Plan (and Strategy): The purpose of the Security Strategy is to move another step along the path to maturing the platform, setting the expectations of any adopters from a security standpoint.
- Composable Homepage 1.0: Driving this to 1.0 by adding some composable components.
- 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.
- Improved UX design: Provide a better Backstage user experience through visual guidelines and templates, especially navigation across plug-ins and portal functionalities.
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.