You’re now running on Backstage 1.8, which brings two main new features: an $openapi resolver that follows any $ref found in the definition and a GitHub-based authentication for manual Catalog registration.

OpenAPI resolver with $ref support

For entities of type API, you can now specify a $openapi resolver to fetch their definition. This new resolver will parse the OpenAPI reference that you provide and if it encounter a $ref, it will resolve it automatically.

You can start using the $openapi resolver in your API’s YAML file under spec.definition. To learn more about managing OpenAPI in Roadie, refer to our Using OpenAPI Specs guide.

GitHub-based authentication for manual registrations

In the past, Backstage would rely on the frontend to register entities when using the manual option, which implied using authentication credentials in GitHub, which caused permissions problems in some cases.

Roadie engineers fixed this issue upstream in the OSS version, and now Backstage uses backend credentials that are mindful of GitHub permissions. This fix is now available to all Roadie customers and every Backstage adopter worldwide using v1.8.

Other improvements in 1.8

Backstage 1.8 brings other improvements behind the scenes, like a new events API, an upgrade in the Node version, and new metrics recorded in the Scaffolder. However, as a Roadie customer you don’t have to concern yourself with new internal APIs or dependencies upgrades: we’ll keep things running smoothly and bring you all the features.