Ruby Agent Release Notes

Ruby Agent Release Notes

Ruby Agent 5.6.0.349

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - 12:44 Download

v5.6.0

  • Bugfix for transactions with ActionController::Live

    Previously, transactions containing ActionController::Live resulted in incorrect calculations of capacity analysis as well as error backtraces appearing in agent logs in agent versions 5.4 and later. The agent now correctly calculates capacity for transactions with ActionController::Live.

  • Add ability to exclude attributes from span events and transaction segments

    Agent versions 5.5 and lower could selectively exclude attributes from page views, error traces, transaction traces, and transaction events. With agent version 5.6 and higher, you can also exclude attributes from span events (via the span_events.include/exclude options) and from transaction segments (via the transaction_segments.include/exclude options).

    As with other attribute destinations, these new options will inherit values from the top-level attributes.include/exclude settings. See the documentation for more information.

  • Increasing backoff sequence on failing to connect to New Relic

    If the agent cannot reach New Relic, it will now wait for an increasing amount of time after each failed attempt. We are also starting with a shorter delay initially, which will help customer apps bounce back more quickly from transient network errors.

  • Truncation of long stack traces

    Previous versions of the agent would truncate long stack traces to 50 frames. To give customers more flexibility, we have added the error_collector.max_backtrace_frames configuration option. Thanks to Patrick Tulskie for the contribution!

  • Update link in documentation

    The community forum link in README.md now goes to the updated location. Thanks to Sam Killgallon for the contribution!

  • Active Storage instrumentation

    The agent now provides instrumentation for Active Storage, introduced in Rails 5.2. Customers will see Active Storage operations represented as segments within transaction traces.

Ruby Agent 5.5.0.348

Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 11:25 Download

v5.5.0

  • Bugfix for perform instrumentation with curb gem

    Use of curb's perform method now no longer results in nil headers getting returned.

  • Bugfix for parsing Docker container IDs

    The agent now parses Docker container IDs correctly regardless of the cgroup parent.

  • Use lazy load hooks for ActiveJob instrumentation

    In some instances the ActiveJob instrumentation could trigger ActiveJob to load before it was initialized by Rails. This could result in configuration changes not being properly applied. The agent now uses lazy load hooks which fixes this issue.

  • Documentation improvement

    The config.dot diagram of the agent's configuration settings no longer includes the deleted developer_mode option. Thanks to Yuichiro Kaneko for the contribution!

Ruby Agent 5.4.0.347

Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - 10:45 Download

v5.4.0

  • Capacity analysis for multi-threaded dispatchers

    Metrics around capacity analysis did not previously account for multi-threaded dispatchers, and consequently could result in capacities of over 100% being recorded. This version now properly accounts for multi-threaded dispatchers.

  • NewRelic::Agent.disable_transaction_tracing deprecated

    NewRelic::Agent.disable_transaction_tracing has been deprecated. Users are encouraged to use NewRelic::Agent.disable_all_tracing or NewRelic::Agent.ignore_transaction instead.

  • Bugfix for SQL over-obfuscation

    A bug, introduced in v5.3.0, where SQL could be over-obfuscated for some database adapters has been fixed.

  • Bugfix for span event data in Resque processes

    A bug where span events would not be sent from Resque processes due to a missing endpoint has been fixed.

Ruby Agent 5.3.0.346

Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - 10:52 Download

v5.3.0

  • Distributed tracing

    Distributed tracing lets you see the path that a request takes as it travels through your distributed system. By showing the distributed activity through a unified view, you can troubleshoot and understand a complex system better than ever before.

    Distributed tracing is available with an APM Pro or equivalent subscription. To see a complete distributed trace, you need to enable the feature on a set of neighboring services. Enabling distributed tracing changes the behavior of some New Relic features, so carefully consult the transition guide before you enable this feature.

    To enable distributed tracing, set thedistributed_tracing.enabled configuration option to true.

Ruby Agent 5.2.0.345

Monday, June 4, 2018 - 11:52 Download

v5.2.0

  • Use priority sampling for errors and custom events

    Priority sampling replaces the older reservoir event sampling method. With this change, the agent will maintain randomness across a given time period while improving coordination among transactions, errors, and custom events.

  • Bugfix for wrapping datastore operations

    The agent will now complete the process of wrapping datastore operations even if an error occurs during execution of a callback.

Ruby Agent 5.1.0.344

Monday, April 30, 2018 - 10:31 Download

Notes

  • Rails 5.2 support

    The Ruby agent has been validated against the latest release of Ruby on Rails!

  • Support for newer libraries and frameworks

    We have updated the multiverse suite to test the agent against current versions of several frameworks.

  • Add custom_attributes.enabled configuration option

    This option is enabled by default. When it's disabled, custom attributes will not be transmitted on transaction events or error events.

  • Fix Grape load order dependency

    The agent will now choose the correct name for Grape transactions even if the customer's app loads the agent before Grape. Thanks to Daniel Doubrovkine for the contribution!

  • Add webpacker:compile to blacklisted tasks

    webpacker:compile is commonly used for compiling assets. It has been added to AUTOSTART_BLACKLISTED_RAKE_TASKS in the default configuration. Thanks to Claudio B. for the contribution!

  • Make browser instrumentation W3C-compliant

    type="text/javascript" is optional for the <script> tag under W3C. The type attribute has now been removed from browser instrumentation. Thanks to Spharian for the contribution!

  • Deferred add_method_tracer calls

    If a third-party library calls add_method_tracer before the agent has finished starting, we now queue these calls and run them when it's safe to do so (rather than skipping them and logging a warning).

  • Bugfix for Resque around / before hooks

    In rare cases, the agent was not instrumenting Resque around and before hooks. This version fixes the error.

  • Truncation of long stack traces

    Occasionally, long stack traces would cause complications sending data to New Relic. This version truncates long traces to 50 frames (split evenly between the top and bottom of the trace).

Ruby Agent 5.0.0.342

Monday, March 26, 2018 - 11:05 Download

Notes

  • SSL connections to New Relic are now mandatory

    Prior to this version, using an SSL connection to New Relic was the default behavior, but could be overridden. SSL connections are now enforced (not overrideable).

  • Additional security checking before trying to explain multi-statement SQL queries

    Customer applications might submit SQL queries containing multiple statements (e.g., SELECT * FROM table; SELECT * FROM table). For security reasons, we should not generate explain plans in this situation.

    Although the agent correctly skipped explain plans for these queries during testing, we have added extra checks for this scenario.

  • Bugfix for RabbitMQ exchange names that are symbols

    The agent no longer raises a TypeError when a RabbitMQ exchange name is a Ruby symbol instead of a string.

  • Bugfix for audit logging to stdout

    Previous agents configured to log to stdout would correctly send regular agent logs to stdout, but would incorrectly send audit logs to a text file named "stdout". This release corrects the error.

  • Bugfix for Capistrano deployment notifications on v3.7 and beyond

    Starting with version 3.7, Capistrano uses a different technique to determine a project's version control system. The agent now works correctly with this new behavior. Thanks to Jimmy Zhang for the contribution.

Ruby Agent 4.8.0.341

Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - 11:05 Download

Notes

  • Initialize New Relic Agent before config initializers

    When running in a Rails environment, the agent registers an initializer that starts the agent. This initializer is now defined to run before config/initializers. Previously, the ordering was not specified for the initializer. This change guarantees the agent will started by the time your initializers run, so you can safely reference the Agent in your custom initializers. Thanks to Tony Ta for the contribution.

  • Ruby 2.5 Support

    The Ruby Agent has been verified to run under Ruby 2.5.

  • request.uri Collected as an Agent Attribute

    Users can now control the collection of request.uri on errors and transaction traces. Previously it was always collected without the ability to turn it off. It is now an agent attribute that can be controlled via the attributes config. For more information on agent attributes see here.

Ruby Agent 4.7.1.340

Friday, December 22, 2017 - 12:52

Notes

  • Bugfix for Manual Browser Instrumentation

    There was a previous bug that required setting both rum.enabled: false and browser.auto_instrument: false to completely disable browser monitoring. An attempt to fix this in 4.7.0 resulted in breaking manual browser instrumentation. Those changes have been reverted. We will revisit this issue in an upcoming release.

Ruby Agent 4.7.0.339

Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - 13:52

Notes

  • Expected Error API

    The agent now sends up error.expected as an intrinsic attribute on error events and error traces. When you pass expected: true to the notice_error method, both Insights and APM will indicate that the error is expected.

  • Typhoeus Hydra Instrumentation

    The agent now has request level visibility for HTTP requests made using Typhoeus Hydra.

  • Total Time Metrics are Recorded

    The agent now records Total Time metrics. In an application where segments execute concurrently, the total time can exceed the wall-clock time for a transaction. Users of the new Typhoeus Hydra instrumentation will notice this as changes on the overview page. Immediately after upgrading there will be an alert in the APM dashboard that states: "There are both old and new time metrics for this time window". This indicates that during that time window, some transactions report the total time metrics, while others do not. The message will go away after waiting for enough time to elapse and / or updating the time window.

  • Add :message category to set_transaction_name public API method

    The agent now permits the :message category to be passed into the public API method set_transaction_name, which will enable the transaction to be displayed as a messaging transaction.

  • Create prepend_active_record_instrumentation config option

    Users may now set the prepend_active_record_instrumentation option in their agent config to install Active Record 3 or 4 instrumentation using Module.prepend rather than alias_method.

  • Use Lazy load hooks for ActionController::Base and ActionController::API

    The agent now uses lazy load hooks to hook on ActionController::Base and ActionController::API. Thanks Edouard Chin for the contribution!

  • Use Lazy load hooks for ActiveRecord::Base and ActiveRecord::Relation

    The agent uses lazy load hooks when recording supportability metrics for ActiveRecord::Base and ActiveRecord::Relation. Thanks Joseph Haig for the contribution!

  • Check that Rails::VERSION is defined instead of just Rails

    The agent now checks that Rails::VERSION is defined since there are cases where Rails is defined but Rails::VERSION is not. Thanks to Alex Riedler and nilsding for the contribution!

  • Support fast RPC/direct reply-to in RabbitMQ

    The agent can now handle the pseudo-queue 'amq.rabbitmq.reply-to' in its Bunny instrumentation. Previously, using fast RPC led to a NoMethodError because the reply-to queue was expected to be a Queue object instead of a string.

Ruby Agent 4.6.0.338

Monday, November 13, 2017 - 10:20 Download

Notes

  • Public API for External Requests

    The agent now has public API for instrumenting external requests and linking up transactions via cross application tracing. See the API Guide for more details on this new functionality.

Ruby Agent 4.5.0.337

Thursday, September 28, 2017 - 13:35

Notes

  • Send synthetics headers even when CAT disabled

    The agent now sends synthetics headers whenever they are received from an external request, even if cross-application tracing is disabled.

  • Bugfix for DelayedJob Daemonization

    Customers using the delayed_job script that ships with the gem may encounter an IOError with a message indicating the stream was closed. This was due to the agent attempting to write a byte into a Pipe that was closed during the deamonization of the delayed_job script. This issue has been fixed.

  • Collect supportability metrics for public API

    The agent now collects Supportability/API/{method} metrics to track usage of all methods in the agent's public API.

  • Collect supportability metrics on Module#prepend

    The agent now collects Supportability/PrependedModules/{Module} metrics for ActiveRecord 4 and 5, ActionController 4 and 5, ActionView 4 and 5, ActiveJob 5, and ActionCable 5. These help track the adoption of the Module#prepend method so we can maintain compatibility with newer versions of Ruby and Rails.

  • Collect explain plans when using PostGIS ActiveRecord adapter

    The agent will now collect slow SQL explain plans, if configured to, on connections using the PostGIS adapter. Thanks Ari Pollak for the contribution!

  • Lazily Intialize New Relic Config

    The agent will lazily initialize the New Relic config. This allows the agent to pickup configuration from environment variables set by dotenv and similar tools.

Ruby Agent 4.4.0.336

Monday, August 28, 2017 - 11:05 Download

Notes

  • Include test helper for 3rd party use

    In 4.2.0, all test files were excluded from being packaged in the gem. An agent class method NewRelic::Agent.require_test_helper was used by 3rd party gem authors to test extensions to the agent. The required file is now included in the gem.

  • Collect cloud metadata from Azure, GCP, PCF, and AWS cloud platform

    The agent now collects additional metadata when running in AWS, GCP, Azure, and PCF. This information is used to provide an enhanced experience when the agent is deployed on those platforms.

  • Install at_exit hook when running JRuby

    The agent now installs an at_exit hook when running JRuby, which wasn't done before because of constraints related to older JRuby versions that are no longer supported.

  • User/Utilization and System/Utilization metrics not recorded after Resque forks

    The agent no longer records invalid User/Utilization and System/Utilization metrics, which can lead to negative values, in forks of Resque processes.

  • Add identifier field to agent connect settings

    The agent now includes a unique identifier in its connect settings, ensuring that when multiple agents connect to multiple different apps, data are reported for each of the apps.

  • Clear transaction state after forking now opt-in

    The agent waits to connect until the first web request when it detects it's running in a forking dispatcher. When clearing the transaction state in this situation we lose the first frame of the transaction and the subsequent trace becomes corrupted. We've made this feature opt-in and is turned off by default. This behavior only affects the first transaction after a dispatcher forks.

Ruby Agent 4.3.0.335

Monday, July 24, 2017 - 10:57

v4.3.0

  • Instrumentation for the Bunny AMQP Client

    The Bunny AMQP Client is now automatically instrumented. The agent will report data for messages sent and received by an application. Data on messages is available in both APM and Insights. Applications connected through a RabbitMQ exchange will now also be visible on Service Maps as part of Cross Application Tracing. See the message queues documentation page for more details.

  • Safely normalize external hostnames

    The agent has been updated to check for nil host values before downcasing the hostname. Thanks Rafael Valério for the contribution!

  • PageView events will not be generated for ignored transactions

    The agent now checks if transaction is ignored before injecting the New Relic Browser Agent. This will prevent PageView events from being generated for ignored transactions.

  • Datastores required explicitly in agent

    The agent has been modified to explicity require the Datastores module whereas previously there were situations where the module could be implicitly defined. Thanks Kevin Griffin for the contribution!

  • Clear transaction state after forking

    Previously, if a transaction was started and the process forks, the transaction state survived the fork and #after_fork call in thread local storage. Now, this state is cleared by #after_fork.

  • Postgis adapter reports as Postgres for datastores

    The agent now maps the Postgis adapter to Postgres for datastore metrics. Thanks Vojtěch Vondra for the contribution!

  • Deprecate :trace_only option

    The NewRelic::Agent.notice_error API has been updated to deprecate the :trace_only option in favor of :expected.

Ruby Agent 4.2.0.334

Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 13:56

v4.2.0

  • Sinatra 2.0 and Padrino 0.14.x Support

    The agent has been verified against the latest versions of Sinatra and Padrino.

  • Rails 5.1 Support

    The Ruby agent has been validated against the latest release of Ruby on Rails!

  • APP_ENV considered when determining environment

    The agent will now consider the APP_ENV environment when starting up.

  • Test files excluded from gem

    The gemspec has been updated to exclude test files from being packaged into the gem. Thanks dimko for the contribution!

Ruby Agent 4.1.0.333

Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - 13:45

v4.1.0

  • Developer Mode removed

    The Ruby Agent's Developer Mode, which provided a very limited view of your application performance data, has been removed. For more information, check out our community forum.

  • Support NEW_RELIC_ENV for Rails apps

    Previously, users could set the agent environment with NEW_RELIC_ENV only for non-Rails apps. For Rails app, the agent environment would use whatever the Rails environment was set to. Now, NEW_RELIC_ENV can also be used for Rails apps, so that it is possible to have an agent environment that is different from the Rails environment. Thanks Andrea Campolonghi for the contribution, as well as Steve Schwartz for also looking into this issue!

  • Normalization of external hostnames

    Hostnames from URIs used in external HTTP requests are now always downcased to prevent duplicate metrics when only case is different.

Ruby Agent 4.0.0.332

Thursday, March 16, 2017 - 11:00 Download

v4.0.0

  • Require Ruby 2.0.0+

    The agent no longer supports Ruby versions prior to 2.0, JRuby 1.7 and earlier, and all versions of Rubinius. Customers using affected Rubies can continue to run 3.x agent versions, but new features or bugfixes will not be published for 3.x agents. For more information, check out our community forum.

  • OkJson vendored library removed

    Ruby 1.8 did not include the JSON gem by default, so the agent included a vendored version of OkJson that it would fall back on using in cases where the JSON gem was not available. This has been removed.

  • YAJL workaround removed

    yajl-ruby versions prior to 1.2 had the potential to cause a segmentation fault when working large, deeply-nested objects like thread profiles. If you are using yajl-ruby with the JSON monkey patches enabled by requiring yajl/json_gem, you should upgrade to at least version 1.2.

  • Deprecated APIs removed

    • Agent.abort_transaction!
    • Agent.add_custom_parameters
    • Agent.add_request_parameters
    • Agent.browser_timing_footer
    • Agent.get_stats
    • Agent.get_stats_no_scope
    • Agent.record_transaction
    • Agent.reset_stats
    • Agent.set_user_attributes
    • Agent::Instrumentation::Rack
    • ActionController#newrelic_notice_error
    • ActiveRecordHelper.rollup_metrics_for (may be incompatible with newrelic_moped)
    • Instrumentation::MetricFrame.recording_web_transaction?
    • Instrumentation::MetricFrame.abort_transaction!
    • MethodTracer.get_stats_scoped
    • MethodTracer.get_stats_unscoped
    • MethodTracer.trace_method_execution
    • MethodTracer.trace_method_execution_no_scope
    • MethodTracer.trace_method_execution_with_scope
    • MetricSpec#sub
    • MetricStats#get_stats
    • MetricStats#get_stats_no_scope
    • NoticedError#exception_class
    • Rack::ErrorCollector
    • StatsEngine::Samplers.add_sampler
    • StatsEngine::Samplers.add_harvest_sampler

    The above methods have had deprecation notices on them for some time and have now been removed. Assistance migrating usage of these APIs is available at https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/agents/ruby-agent/troubleshooting/update-... .

    The agent no longer deletes deprecated keys passed to add_method_tracer. Passing in deprecated keys can cause an exception. Ensure that you are not passing any of the following keys: :force, :scoped_metric_only, :deduct_call_time_from_parent to add_method_tracer.

    The agent no longer deletes deprecated keys passed in as options to NewRelic::Agent.notice_error. If you are passing any of these deprecated keys: :request_params, :request, :referer to the notice_error API, please delete them otherwise they will be collected as custom attributes.

  • Error handling changes

    The agent now only checks for original_exception in environments with Rails versions prior to 5. Checking for Exception#cause has been removed. In addition, the agent now will match class name with message and backtrace when noticing errors that have an original_exception.

Ruby Agent 3.18.1.330

Thursday, February 9, 2017 - 11:21 Download

v3.18.1

  • Ensure Mongo aggregate queries are properly obfuscated

    Instrumentation for the Mongo 2.x driver had a bug where the pipeline attribute of Mongo aggregate queries was not properly obfuscated. Users who have sensitive data in their aggregate queries are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this version of the agent. Users who are unable to upgrade are encouraged to turn off query collection using by setting mongo.capture_queries to false in their newrelic.yml files.

    This release fixes New Relic Security Bulletin NR17-03.

  • Early access Redis 4.0 instrumentation

    Our Redis instrumentation has been tested against Redis 4.0.0.rc1.

Ruby Agent 3.18.0.329

Monday, January 23, 2017 - 11:30 Download

v3.18.0

  • Ruby 2.4.0 support

    The agent is now tested against the official release of ruby 2.4.0, excluding incompatible packages.

  • Agent-based metrics will not be recorded outside of active transactions

    The agent has historically recorded metrics outside of a transaction. In practice, this usually occurs in applications that run background job processors. The agent would record metrics for queries the background job processor is making between transactions. This can lead to display issues on the background overview page and the presence of metrics generated by the background job processor can mask the application generated metrics on the database page. The agent will no longer generate metrics outside of a transaction. Custom metrics recorded using NewRelic::Agent.record_metric will continue to be recorded regardless of whether there is an active transaction.

  • Include ControllerInstrumentation module with ActiveSupport.on_load

    The agent will now use the on_load :action_controller hook to include the ControllerInstrumentation module in to both the Base and API classes of ActionController for Rails 5. This ensures that the proper load order is retained, minimizing side-effects of having the agent in an application.

  • Ensure values for revisions on Capistrano deploy notices

    Previously, running the task to look up the changelog could generate an error, if there weren't previous and current revisions defined. This has now been fixed. Thanks Winfield Peterson for the contribution!

  • External Segment Rewrites

    The agent has made internal changes to how it represents segments for external web requests.

Ruby Agent 3.17.2.327

Tuesday, December 13, 2016 - 10:55 Download

v3.17.2

  • Compatibility with Ruby 2.4.0-preview3

    The Ruby agent has been updated to work on Ruby 2.4.0-preview3.

  • Early Access Sinatra 2.0 instrumentation

    Our Sinatra instrumentation has been updated to work with Sinatra 2.0.0.beta2.

  • Include controller instrumentation module in Rails 5 API

    The agent now includes the ControllerInstrumentation module into ActionController::API. This gives Rails API controllers access to helper methods like newrelic_ignore in support of the existing event-subscription-based action instrumentation. Thanks Andreas Thurn for the contribution!

  • Use Module#prepend for ActiveRecord 5 Instrumentation

    Rails 5 deprecated the use of alias_method_chain in favor of using Module#prepend. Mixing Module#prepend and alias_method_chain can lead to a SystemStackError when an alias_method_chain is applied after a module has been prepended. This should ensure better compatibility between our ActiveRecord Instrumentation and other third party gems that modify ActiveRecord using Module#prepend.

  • Use license key passed in to NewRelic::Agent.manual_start

    Previously, the license key passed in when manually starting the agent with NewRelic::Agent.manual_start was not referenced when setting up the connection to report data to New Relic. This is now fixed.

  • Account for DataMapper database connection errors

    Our DataMapper instrumentation traces instances of DataObjects::SQLError being raised and removes the password from the URI attribute. However, when DataObjects cannot connect to the database (ex: could not resolve host), it will raise a DataObjects::ConnectionError. This inherits from DataObjects::SQLError but has nil for its URI attribute, since no connection has been made yet. To avoid the password check here on nil, the agent catches and re-raises any instances of DataObjects::ConnectionError explicitly. Thanks Postmodern for this contribution!

  • Account for request methods that require arguments

    When tracing a transaction, the agent tries to get the request object from a controller if it wasn't explicitly passed in. However, this posed problems in non-controller transactions with their own request methods defined that required arguments, such as in Resque jobs. This is now fixed.

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