Backstage Weekly 63 - Backstage 1.7, import emails from GitHub

Hi y’all! this week, the newsletter highlights the most recent Backstage 1.7, the upcoming ability to import users’ emails from GitHub, and the new meta-issue that makes it easier to contribute to the Catalog.

The new Backstage 1.7

The latest Backstage release comes with a renovated Catalog import mechanism, improvements in the permissions frameworks, and other updates.

Thanks to Roadie’s kissmikijr, the analysis is done when registering a component via de UI is now handled by the backend instead of the frontend.

Additionally, the permissions framework now requires Zod Schemas when creating permission rules. Other updates include migrations to Jest v29 and react-router v6.

Check out the Release note for more details.

Roadie ensures your Backstage instance is safe and performant by keeping it up to date. As of now, all Roadie customers are running on Backstage 1.7. Get a Roadie Backstage demo

Store users’ emails when importing from GitHub

If you offer multiple login mechanisms in your Backstage instance, it can be useful to know the emails when importing users from GitHub so you can match users to a single account. Thanks to ScottGuymer, you’ll be able to import organization-verified emails and find them in [spec.profile.email](http://spec.profile.email) for each user.

Check out the details on this new feature in the PR. This feature will land in the next release for plugins/catalog-backend-module-github.

All Catalog issues under the same meta-issue

Rugvip collected all the ongoing discussions and ideas around improving the Catalog and arranged them in different categories. From the Catalog model and new features, to performance issues and ingestion, there are issues for everyone. Check out the meta-issue and subscribe, it’s a good one to keep an eye on!

Talk to you next week!

Jorge L