The Hitchhiker's Guide To Upgrading Backstage: Don't Panic!
summary
Maintains Backstage for hundreds of customers and upgrades roughly quarterly, using yarn backstage-cli and the upgrader to automate changes but running a script to strip caret ranges so unintended dependency bumps don’t sneak in. Solves a React 18 conflict by pinning swagger-ui-react via yarn resolutions, fixes TechDocs subpath breaks by switching from window.location.origin to app.baseUrl, adopts nightly builds for urgent package fixes, and converts backend plugin migrations into DB migration SQL rollback scripts while always testing rollback as part of the upgrade checklist.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and motivation
- 1:08First upgrade experience
- 4:25Managing dependency versions
- 5:39Handling breaking changes
- 8:13Bug fixes and nightly builds
- 9:52Backend system migration
- 12:54Rollback strategies
- 16:38Future frontend upgrades
- 17:13Best practices and conclusion
- 19:41Q&A session
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