Chapter 2. New features

Red Hat Developer Hub is now based on the upstream Backstage project v1.26.5.

With this update, you can use the telemetry data collection feature, which is enabled by default. Analyzing the collected data helps in improving your experience with Red Hat Developer Hub. You can disable this feature based on your needs. For more information, see the Disabling telemetry data collection in RHDH section.

Administrators can view details about application changes, including the name and role of the user who made the change and the time that the change was made. Audit log data is captured by the RBAC plugin and scaffolder actions by default.

Administrators can now use the audit logs to view changes to the catalog database. Tracking changes that add, remove, or update data in the catalog database helps ensure the accountability and transparency of actions.

You can now use RBAC conditional policies in Red Hat Developer Hub, enabling access control based on dynamic conditions. These conditions act as content filters for Developer Hub resources that are managed by the RBAC plugin.

You can specify the conditional policies for the Keycloak and Quay Actions plugins. Also, you must consider reviewing your security needs for components that do not have RBAC controls.

For more information, see Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Red Hat Developer Hub.

Basic permissions for OCM and Topology plugins are now added to the Red Hat Developer Hub. You must consider reviewing your security needs for components that do not have RBAC controls.

With this update, you can run the RHDH application behind a corporate proxy by setting the HTTP_PROXY or HTTPS_PROXY environment variable. Also, you can set the NO_PROXY environment variable to exclude certain domains from proxying. For more information, see the Running the RHDH application behind a corporate proxy section.

With this update, you can configure and use external PostgreSQL databases in Red Hat Developer Hub. Based on your needs, you can use a PostgreSQL certificate file to configure an external PostgreSQL instance using the Operator or Helm Chart. For more information, see the Configuring external PostgreSQL databases section.

You can configure an RHDH instance with a Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection in a Kubernetes cluster, such as an Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) cluster, any cluster from a supported cloud provider, or your own cluster with proper configuration. For more information, see the Configuring an RHDH instance with a TLS connection in Kubernetes.

The following additional plugins are included in Red Hat Developer Hub 1.2:

For a comprehensive list of supported dynamic plugins, see the Preinstalled dynamic plugins.

With this update, theme configurations are enhanced to change the look and feel of different UI components so that they almost resemble the theme that is usually used in designing Red Hat applications. You might notice changes in UI components, such as buttons, tabs, sidebars, cards, and tables along with some changes in background color and font used on the RHDH pages.

You can update the app-config.yaml file to change the look of multiple Developer Hub theme components for enhanced customization.

You can now use the scaffolderFieldExtensions configuration option in a dynamic plugin’s front-end configuration. The scaffolderFieldExtensions option allows a dynamic plugin to specify one or more exported components to be provided to the scaffolder plugin as field extensions. These scaffolder field extensions provide custom form field components for the software template wizard.

In previous versions, updating ConfigMaps or Secrets specified in Backstage.spec.Application required recreating the Pod to apply changes. Beginning with version 1.2, this process is automated.

You can now configure Learning Paths in Developer Hub to create a dynamic experience tailored to your specific learning needs.

In Red Hat Developer Hub 1.2.2, the following plugin versions are upgraded as follows: