Backstage Weekly 75 - 1.12, cancel Scaffolder task, `onboard`

Hi y’all! I’m back after some holidays, and I am very excited to see share the latest cool stuff in the Backstage ecosystem:

• Backstage 1.12 release
• Cancellable Scaffolder tasks
• onboard - a new opinionated CLI command to simplify adoption
• Improved Backstage docs with proper file name references

Backstage 1.2 is here!

It’s time to get your hands dirty with the new features that come with this release. My absolute favorite, Paginated Catalog results, can dramatically improve your Catalog’s UX, so check it out!

Additionally, it’s now possible to define Scaffolder actions with zod schemas, giving you type feedback when working with the action’s inputs and outputs.

There’s three new plugins released in this version and no security fixes. Check out the release notes from the Backstage team.

Using managed Backstage lets you focus on building value for your team instead of learning internals and upgrading your instance. Get a Roadie Backstage demo

Cancel a running Scaffolder task

Ever realized that you set up something wrong while executing a Scaffolder template? Thanks to acierto, you can click ‘Cancel’ in the Scaffolder UI while a task is running!

The button sends an abort signal to the action currently executing, which the task runner will pick up. The cancel button can be also useful when you notice that something is not going as expected from the logs, or when a task is hanging and you want to abort it immediately.

This feature will be available on Backstage 1.13, scheduled for April 18th. Check out the PR for additional context.

New onboarding command

marcuseide and his team have a clear objective with the new command: make it easier to adopt Backstage. The command will provide an opinionated set up that allows the user to get more done without having to dab in the docs to figure out the details.

In the first iteration of the onboard command, the team has shipped an assistant for setting up authentication through the CLI.

This new command will be available on Backstage 1.13, scheduled for April 18th. Check out the PR for additional context.

Improved Backstage docs: file names

There are many references in the Backstage docs where a diff or a code snippet is shown to explain a concept. However, these references were implemented without a title, meaning the file name was included as a comment on the code block.

schultzp2020 went through the heroic task of transforming all diffs and code snippets into code blocks with a title and highlighting the lines of interest.

As you can see, the docs turned out very well and gained a lot of readability. Thank you Paul! Time to revisit Backstage’s docs!

Talk to you next week!

Jorge L