Backstage Weekly 79 - Go SDK with CLI access, Fixed Stack Overflow plugin,
By Jorge Lainfiesta • April 17th, 2023Hi y’all! I’m very excited to see some of you in Amsterdam this week! There are also great updates in Backstage this week:
- New Go SDK: access the Backstage API through the CLI and use it in Go apps
- The Stack Overflow plugin now supports PAT authentication
- New in: what is Platform Engineering, according to the CNCF (with a Backstage mention)
A Go SDK and CLI tool for Backstage
As explained in depth by Taras during BackstageCon, bringing Backstage to where developers are—the CLI in this case—can be a game-changer for Developer Experience. Oscar Söderlund, from Einride, championed the new SDK that lets you access the Backstage Catalog API through the CLI and a Go Client.
The SDK lets you authenticate into your instance and query entities through various methods. The SDK is Open Source and readily available, check it out!
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
Stack Overflow plugin: back online
Stack Overflow deprecated the API used by the Backstage plugin on January 25th, 2023, which meant the plugin would stop working. Thanks to cmdkeen, you can now use PAT for authentication with Stack Overflow.
This plugin upgrade will be released as part of Backstage 1.13, expected to land tomorrow or shortly after that. Stay tuned!
CNCF WG on Platform Engineering
Platform Engineering is a hot topic lately. The CNCF has put together a white paper that explains the concepts and value behind this term and how the CNCF projects fit together in a Platform. Backstage is mentioned under the “Web portals for provisioning and observing capabilities” capability and as a platform interface.
In my opinion, the authors under-appreciate Backstage in this first document, as they don’t consider the framework capabilities for search, documentation, and golden path templates. I’ll meet them in person during KubeCon to advocate for Backstage in this group; wish me luck!
The paper is great nonetheless and boils down a lot of hype into concrete terms within a vendor-neutral territory. I definitely recommend giving it a read.