Ruby agent release notesRSS

v6.8.0

• Initial Ruby 2.7 support

  The Ruby agent has been verified to run with Ruby 2.7.0-preview1.

• New API method to add custom attributes to Spans

  New API method for adding custom attributes to spans. Previously, custom attributes were only available at the Transaction level. Now, with Span level custom attributes, more granular tagging is possible for easier isolation and review of traces. For more information:

  • Agent#add_custom_span_attributes

• Enables ability to migrate to configurable security policies (CSP) on a per-agent basis for accounts already using high-security mode (HSM).

  When both HSM and CSP are enabled for an account, an agent (this version or later) can successfully connect with either high_security: true or the appropriate security_policies_token configured. high_security has been added as part of the preconnect payload.

• Bugfix for logs-in-context combined with act-fluent-logger-rails

  Previously, when using the Ruby agent's logs-in-context logger to link logging data with trace and entity metadata for an improved experience in the UI, customers who were also using the act-fluent-logger-rails gem would see a NoMethodError for clear_tags! that would interfere with the use of this feature. This error no longer appears, allowing customers to combine the use of logs-in-context with the use of this gem.

  Please note that the logs-in-context logger does not support tagged logging; if you are initializing your logger with a log_tags argument, your custom tags may not appear on the final version of your logs.

• Bugfix for parsing invalid newrelic.yml

  Previously, if the newrelic.yml configuration file was invalid, and the agent could not start as a result, the agent would not log any indication of the problem.

  This version of the agent will emit a FATAL message to STDOUT when this scenario occurs so that customers can address issues with newrelic.yml that prevent startup.

• Configuration options containing the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" deprecated

  The following local configuration settings have been deprecated:

  • autostart.blacklisted_constants: use autostart.denylisted_constants instead.
  • autostart.blacklisted_executables: use autostart.denylisted_executables instead.
  • autostart.blacklisted_rake_tasks: use autostart.denylisted_rake_tasks instead.
  • strip_exception_messages.whitelist: use strip_exception_messages.allowed_classes instead.

• Bugfix for module loading and constant resolution in Rails

  Starting in version 6.3, the Ruby agent has caused module loading and constant resolution to sometimes fail, which caused errors in some Rails applications. These errors were generally NoMethodError exceptions or I18n errors translation missing or invalid locale. These errors would not appear if the agent was removed from the application's Gemfile. This version of the agent fixes these issues with module loading and constant resolution, so these errors no longer occur.

• Bugfix: failed to get urandom

  Previous versions of the agent would fail unexpectedly when the Ruby process used every available file descriptor. The failures would include this message:

  ERROR : RuntimeError: failed to get urandom

  Copier

  This version of the agent uses a different strategy for generating random IDs, and will not fail in the same way when no file descriptors are available.

v6.7.0

• Support for Real Time Streaming

  • Event data is now sent to New Relic every five seconds, instead of every minute. As a result, transaction, error, and custom events will now be available in New Relic and Insights dashboards in near real time. For more information on how to view your events with a five-second refresh, see the real time streaming documentation.
  • Note that the overall limits on how many events can be sent per minute have not changed. Also, span events, metrics, and trace data is unaffected, and will still be sent every minute.

• Trace and Entity Metadata API

  Several new API methods have been added to the agent:

  • Agent#linking_metadata
  • Tracer#trace_id
  • Tracer#span_id
  • Tracer#sampled?

  These API methods allow you to access information that can be used to link data of your choosing to a trace or entity.

• Logs in Context

  This version of the agent includes a logger, which can be used in place of ::Logger from the standard library, or ActiveSupport::Logger from Rails. This logger leverages the new trace and entity metadata API to decorate log statements with entity and trace metadata, so they can be correlated together in the New Relic UI.

  For more information on how to use logs in context, see https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/enable-logs-context-ruby

• Project metadata in Gemspec

  Project metadata has been added to the gemspec file. This means our Rubygems page will allow users to more easily access the agent's source code, raise issues, and read the changelog.

  Thanks to Orien Madgwick for the contribution!

v6.6.0

• Bugfix for ActionCable Instrumentation

  Previous versions of the agent sometimes caused application crashes with some versions of ActionCable. The application would exit quickly after startup with the error: uninitialized constant ActionCable::Engine.

  Version 6.6.0 of the agent no longer crashes in this way.

• Handling of disabling Error Collection

  When the agent first starts, it begins collecting Error Events and Traces before fetching configuration from New Relic. In previous versions of the agent, those events or traces would be sent to New Relic, even if Error Collection is disabled in the application's server-side configuration.

  Version 6.6.0 of the agent drops all collected Error Events and Traces if the configuration from the server disables Error Collection.

Improvements

Change to default setting for ActiveRecord connection resolution

Due to incompatibilities between the faster ActiveRecord connection resolution released in Ruby agent v6.3.0 and other gems that patch ActiveRecord, backport_fast_active_record_connection_lookup will now be set to false by default. This will result in significant performance improvement.

Recommendation: If your environment includes ActiveRecord, change this setting to true.

Exception: If you are using other gems that measure ActiveRecord performance, they may lose functionality when combined with this setting. If you are unsure whether to enable backport_fast_active_record_connection_lookup, we recommend enabling it in a development environment to make sure other gems that patch ActiveRecord are still working as expected.

Fixes

• Bugfix for ActiveStorage instrumentation error

  Version 6.4.0 of the agent introduced a bug that interfered with ActiveStorage callbacks, resulting in the agent being unable to instrument ActiveStorage operations. ActiveStorage segments are now correctly recorded.

• Bugfix for ActiveRecord 4.1 and 4.2 exception logging

  Version 6.3.0 of the agent introduced a bug that prevented ActiveRecord versions 4.1 and 4.2 from logging exceptions that occurred within a database transaction. This version of the agent restores the exception logging functionality from previous agent versions. Thanks to Oleksiy Kovyrin for the contribution!

Notes

The Ruby agent now enforces a maximum of 10,000 transaction events and custom events and 100 error events per minute.

v6.4.0

• Custom Metadata Collection

  The agent now collects environment variables prefixed by NEW_RELIC_METADATA_. These may be added to transaction events to provide context between your Kubernetes cluster and your services. For details on the behavior, see this blog post.

• Bugfix for faster ActiveRecord connection resolution

  Version 6.3.0 of the agent backported the faster ActiveRecord connection resolution from Rails 6.0 to previous versions, but the implementation caused certain other gems which measured ActiveRecord performance to stop working. This version of the agent changes the implementation of this performance improvement so no such conflicts occur.

• Bugfix for Grape instrumentation error

  Previous versions of the agent would fail to install Grape instrumentation in Grape versions 1.2.0 and up if the API being instrumented subclassed Grape::API::Instance rather than Grape::API. A warning would also print to the newrelic_agent log:

  WARN : Error in Grape instrumentation
  WARN : NoMethodError: undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass

  Copier

  This version of the agent successfully installs instrumentation for subclasses of Grape::API::Instance, and these log messages should no longer appear.

• Bugfix for streaming responses

  Previous versions of the agent would attempt to insert JavaScript instrumentation into any streaming response that did not make use of ActionController::Live. This resulted in an empty, non-streamed response being sent to the client.

  This version of the agent will not attempt to insert JavaScript instrumentation into a response which includes the header Transfer-Encoding=chunked, which indicates a streaming response.

  This should exclude JavaScript instrumentation for all streamed responses. To include this instrumentation manually, see Manually instrument via agent API in our documentation.

v6.3.0

• Official Rails 6.0 support

  This version of the agent has been verified against the Rails 6.0.0 release.

  As ActiveRecord 4, 5, and 6 use the same New Relic instrumentation, the disable_active_record_4 and disable_active_record_5 settings in NewRelic.yml are being deprecated in favor of the new disable_active_record_notifications. This new setting will affect the instrumentation of ActiveRecord 4, 5, and 6. The deprecated settings will be removed in a future release.

• Bugfix for newrelic deployments script

  For applications housed in the EU, the newrelic deployments script included with previous versions of the agent would fail with the following message: Deployment not recorded: Application does not exist. This is because the script would attempt to send the deployment notification to the US region. The deployment script now sends deployments to the correct region.

• Faster ActiveRecord connection resolution

  This version of the agent uses the faster ActiveRecord connection resolution that Rails 6.0 uses, even on previous versions of Rails. Thanks to Callum Jones for the contribution!

• Support non-ascii characters in hostnames

  Previous versions of the agent would frequently log warnings like: log writing failed. "\xE2" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 if the hostname contained a non-ascii character. This version of the agent will no longer log these warnings. Thanks to Rafael Petry for the contribution!

v6.2.0

• Bugfix for superfluous Empty JSON response error messages

  Version 6.1.0 of the agent frequently logged error messages about an empty JSON response, when no error had occurred. These logs no longer appear.

• Bugfix for Unable to calculate elapsed transaction time warning messages

  Ruby Agent versions 5.4 through 6.1, when running in jruby without ObjectSpace enabled, would occasionally log a warning indicating that the agent was unable to calculate the elapsed transaction time. When this log statement appeared, the affected transactions would not be included in the data displayed on the capacity analysis page. These transactions are now correctly recorded.

v6.1.0

• Performance monitoring on Kubernetes

  This release adds Transaction event attributes that provide context between your Kubernetes cluster and services. For details on the benefits, see this blog post.

• Bugfix for Bunny instrumentation when popping empty queues

  When a customer calls Bunny::Queue#pop on an empty queue, Bunny returns a nil value. Previous Ruby Agent versions raised a NoMethodError when trying to process this result. Now, the agent correctly skips processing for nil values. Thanks to Matt Campbell for the contribution.

v6.0.0

• Tracer API for flexible custom instrumentation

  With agent version 6.0, we are introducing the Tracer class, an officially supported public API for more flexible custom instrumentation. By calling its in_transaction method, you can instrument an arbitrary section of Ruby code without needing to juggle any explicit state. Behind the scenes, the agent will make sure that the measured code results in an APM segment inside a transaction.

  The same API contains additional methods for creating transactions and segments, and for interacting with the current transaction. For more details, see the custom instrumentation documentation.

  If you were previously using any of the agent's private, undocumented APIs, such as Transaction.wrap or Transaction.start/stop, you will need to update your code to use the Tracer API.

  The full list of APIs that were removed or deprecated are:

  • External.start_segment

  • Transaction.create_segment

  • Transaction.start

  • Transaction.stop

  • Transaction.start_datastore_segment

  • Transaction.start_segment

  • Transaction.wrap

  • TransactionState.current_transaction

    If are you using any of these APIs, please see the upgrade guide for a list of replacements.

• Agent detects Rails 6.0

  The agent properly detects Rails 6.0 and no longer logs an error when started in a Rails 6.0 environment. This does not include full Rails 6.0 support, which will be coming in a future release. Thanks to Jacob Bednarz for the contribution.