Ruby agent release notesRSS

v8.14.0

Version 8.14.0 of the agent restores desired Capistrano-based changelog lookup functionality when a deployment is performed, speeds up GUID generation, delivers support for instrumenting Rails custom event notifications, fixes potential compatibility issues with the RedisClient gem, and fixes bugs related to initialization in Rails.

• Deployment Recipe: Restore desired Capistrano-based changelog lookup behavior

  The New Relic Ruby agent offers a Capistrano recipe for recording app deployments. The recipe code was significantly cleaned up with PR#1498 which inadvertently changed the way the recipe handles the changelog for a deployment. Community member @arthurwozniak spotted and corrected this change in order to restore the desired changelog lookup functionality while retaining all of the previous cleanup. Thank you very much for your contribution, @arthurwozniak! PR#1653

• Speed up GUID generation

  The agent leverages random numbers in its GUID (globally unique identifier) generation and would previously always freshly calculate the result of 16^16 or 32^32 before generating a random number. Given that those 16^16 and 32^32 operations are expected, it makes sense to calculate their results up front and store them in constants to be referred to later. Doing so has resulted in a performance gain for the generation of GUIDs. Many thanks to @tungmq for contributing this optimisation and the benchmarks to support it! PR#1693

• Support for Rails ActiveSupport::Notifications for custom events

  When the new active_support_custom_events_names configuration parameter is set equal to an array of custom event names to subscribe to, the agent will now subscribe to each of the names specified and report instrumentation for the events when they take place. Creating custom events is simple and now reporting instrumentation for them to New Relic is simple as well. PR#1659

• Bugfix: Support older versions of the RedisClient gem, handle unknown Redis database index

  With version 8.13.0 of the agent, support was added for the redis-rb gem v5+ and the new RedisClient gem. With versions of RedisClient older than v0.11, the agent could cause the monitored application to crash when attempting to determine the Redis database index. Version 8.14.0 adds two related improvements. Firstly, support for RedisClient versions older than v0.11 has been added to get at the database index value. Secondly, the agent will no longer crash or impact the monitored application in the event that the database index cannot be obtained. Thank you very much to our community members @mbsmartee and @patatepartie for bringing this issue to our attention, for helping us determine how to best reproduce it, and for testing out the update. We appreciate your help! Issue#1650 PR#1673

• Bugfix: Defer agent startup in Rails until after application-defined initializers have run

  In Rails, the agent previously loaded before any application-defined initializers. This allowed initializers to reference the add_method_tracer API. However, this had the side-effect of forcing some framework libraries to load before initializers ran, preventing any configuration values related to these libraries from being applied. This fix provides an option to split initialization into two parts: load add_method_tracer before application-defined initializers and start the agent after application-defined initializers. This may cause other initializers to behave differently.

  If you'd like to use this feature, set defer_rails_initialization to true. It is false by default, but may become true by default in a future release.

  Furthermore, our Action View instrumentation was missing an ActiveSupport.on_load block around the code that loads our instrumentation.

  Thank you @jdelStrother for bringing this to our attention and collaborating with us on a fix. PR#1658

  Unfortunately, this bugfix is unreachable as written because the configuration value used to access the bugfix won't be applied until after initialization. Follow along for updates at Issue#662.

v8.13.1

Version 8.13.1 of the agent provides a bugfix for Redis v5.0 instrumentation.

• Fix NoMethodError when using Sidekiq v7.0 with Redis Client v0.11

  In some cases, the RedisClient object cannot directly access methods like db, port, or path. These methods are always available on the client.config object. This raised a NoMethodError in environments that used Sidekiq v7.0 and Redis Client v0.11. Thank you to fcheung and @stevenou for bringing this to our attention! Issue#1639

v8.13.0

Version 8.13.0 of the agent updates our Rack, Redis, and Sidekiq instrumentation. It also delivers some bugfixes.

• Support for Redis v5.0

  Redis v5.0 restructures where some of our instrumented methods are located and how they are named. It also introduces a new instrumentation middleware API. This API is used for pipelined and multi calls to maintain reporting parity with previous Redis versions. However, it is introduced later in the chain, so you may see errors that used to appear at the segment level on the transaction instead. The agent's behavior when used with older supported Redis versions will remain unaffected. PR#1611

• Support for Sidekiq v7.0

  Sidekiq v7.0 removed Delayed Extensions and began offering client and server middleware classes to inherit from. The agent's Sidekiq instrumentation has been updated accordingly. The agent's behavior when used with older Sidekiq versions will remain unaffected. PR#1615 NOTE: an issue was discovered with Sidekiq v7.0+ and addressed by Ruby agent v8.13.1. If you are using Sidekiq, please skip Ruby agent v8.13.0 and use v8.13.1 or above.

• Support for Rack v3.0: Rack::Builder#new accepting a block

  Via rack/rack#1942 (released with Rack v3.0), Rack::Builder#run now optionally accepts a block instead of an app argument. The agent's instrumentation has been updated to support the use of a block with Rack::Builder#run. PR#1600

• Bugfix: Correctly identify Unicorn, Rainbows and FastCGI with Rack v3.0

  Unicorn, Rainbows, or FastCGI web applications using Rack v3.0 may previously have had the "dispatcher" value incorrectly reported as "Webrick" instead of "Unicorn", "Rainbows", or "FastCGI". This issue has now been addressed. PR#1585

• Bugfix: add_method_tracer fails to record code level metric attributes on private methods

  When using add_method_tracer on a private method, the agent was unable to record code level metrics for the method. This resulted in the following being logged to the newrelic_agent.log file.

  WARN : Unable to determine source code info for 'Example', method 'private_method' - NameError: undefined method 'private_method' for class '#<Class:Example\>'

  Copier

  Thank you @jdelStrother for bringing this issue to our attention and suggesting a fix! PR#1593

• Bugfix: Category is a required keyword arg for NewRelic::Agent::Tracer.in_transaction

  When support for Ruby 2.0 was dropped in version 8.0.0 of the agent, the agent API methods were updated to use the required keyword argument feature built into Ruby, rather than manually raising ArgumentErrors. The API method NewRelic::Agent::Tracer.in_transaction removed the ArgumentError raised by the agent, but did not update the method arguments to identify :category as a required keyword argument. This is now resolved. Thank you @tatzsuzuki for bringing this to our attention. PR#1587

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the Ruby agent regularly and at a minimum of every 3 months. As of this release, the oldest supported version is 6.8.0.359.

v8.12.0

La version 8.12.0 de l'agent Ruby apporte une nouvelle instrumentation Elasticsearch. La version 8.12.0 de l'agent Ruby augmente également le nombre par défaut d'événements personnalisés enregistrés, annonce la dépréciation de Ruby 2.3, et apporte un nettoyage de code utile.

• Prise en charge de l’instrumentation Elasticsearch

  Cette sortie de l’agent Ruby ajoute la prise en charge pour instrument automatiquement le gem elasticsearch. Les versions 7.x et 8.x sont prises en charge. PR#1525

  Nom de la configuration	Défaut	Comportement
  instrumentation.elasticsearch	auto	Contrôle l’auto-instrumentation de la bibliothèque elasticsearch au démarrage. Peut être l’un de auto, prepend, chain, disabled.
  elasticsearch.capture_queries	vrai	Si true, l'agent capture la requête Elasticsearch dans la trace de transaction.
  elasticsearch.obfuscate_queries	vrai	Si true, l'agent obscurcit la requête Elasticsearch dans la trace de transaction.

• Augmentation de la limite des événements personnalisés

  Cette version de l'agent Ruby augmente la limite par défaut des événements personnalisés de 1000 événements par minute à 3000 événements par minute. Si vos événements personnalisés étaient limités, ce changement permettra d'envoyer davantage d'événements personnalisés à New Relic. Il existe également une nouvelle limite maximale configurable de 100 000 événements par minute. Pour modifier les limites, consultez la documentation de max_samples_stored. Pour en savoir plus sur ce changement et comment déterminer si des événements personnalisés sont rejetés, consultez notre publication sur l'Explorers Hub. PR#1541

• Déprécier la prise en charge de Ruby 2.3

  Ruby 2.3 a atteint sa fin de vie le 31 mars 2019. L’agent Ruby a déprécié la prise en charge de Ruby 2.3 et apportera des changements majeurs pour cette version lors de sa prochaine sortie majeure, la v9.0.0 (date de sortie non encore planifiée). Toutes les versions 8.x.x de l’agent resteront compatibles avec Ruby 2.3.

• Nettoyage : supprimez le code orphelin

  Dans l’agent comme dans les tests unitaires, des changements ont eu lieu au fil des ans, rendant certaines parties du code inaccessibles. Ce code orphelin peut compliquer la maintenance du code et le refactoring, c’est pourquoi le nettoyer peut être très utile. Le membre de la communauté @ohbarye a soumis deux PR de nettoyage distinctes pour cette sortie ; une pour l’agent et une pour les tests. PR#1537 PR#1548

  Merci à @ohbarye d'avoir contribué à ce nettoyage utile !

Déclaration de soutien

New Relic recommande de mettre à jour l’agent Ruby régulièrement et au minimum tous les 3 mois. À partir de cette version, la plus ancienne version prise en charge est 6.7.0.359.

v8.11.0

Version 8.11.0 of the agent updates the newrelic deployments command to work with API keys issued to newer accounts, fixes a memory leak in the instrumentation of Curb error handling, further preps for Ruby 3.2.0 support, and includes several community member driven cleanup and improvement efforts. Thank you to everyone involved!

• Added support for New Relic REST API v2 when using newrelic deployments command

  Previously, the newrelic deployments command only supported the older version of the deployments api, which does not currently support newer license keys. Now you can use the New Relic REST API v2 to record deployments by providing your user API key to the agent configuration using api_key. When this configuration option is present, the newrelic deployments command will automatically use the New Relic REST API v2 deployment endpoint. PR#1461

  Thank you to @Arkham for bringing this to our attention!

• Cleanup: Performance tests, constants, rubocop-minitest assertions and refutations

  Community member @esquith contributed a whole slew of cleanup successes for our performance test configuration, orphaned constants in our code base, and RuboCop related improvements. PR#1406 PR#1408 PR#1409 PR#1411

  Thank you @esquith for these great contributions!

• CI: Notify on a change from failure to success

  A super handy, much beloved feature of certain CI and build systems is to not only notify when builds start to fail, but also to notify again when the builds once again start to go green. Community member @luigieai was able to figure out how to configure our existing complex, multiple-3rd-party-action based GitHub Actions pipeline to notify on a switch back to success from failure. PR#1519

  This is much appreciated! Thank you, @luigieai.

• Spelling corrections

  Community member @jsoref, author of the Check Spelling GitHub Action, contributed a significant number of spelling corrections throughout the code base. The intelligent issues that were flagged made for a more comprehensive review than a simple dictionary based check would have been able to provide, and the changes are much appreciated. PR#1508

  Thank you very much, @jsoref!

• Ruby 3.2.0-preview2 compatibility

  Ruby 3.2.0-preview1 introduced a change to the way that Ruby reports VM stats and the approach was changed yet again to a 3rd approach with the preview2 release. New Relic reports on Ruby VM stats and is keeping track of the Ruby 3.2 development process to help ensure our customers with a smooth and worthwhile upgrade process once Ruby 3.2.0 (non-preview) is released. PR#1436

• Bugfix: Fix memory leak in the Curb instrumentation

  Community member @charkost was able to rework the on_failure callback logic prepped via the agent's Curb instrumentation in order to avoid some nesting that was causing memory leaks. PR#1518

  Many thanks for both the heads up on the issue and the fix, @charkost!

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly and at a minimum every 3 months. As of this release, the oldest supported version is 6.7.0.359.

v8.10.1

• Bugfix: Missing unscoped metrics when instrumentation.thread.tracing is enabled

  Previously, when instrumentation.thread.tracing was set to true, some puma applications encountered a bug where a varying number of unscoped metrics would be missing. The agent now will correctly store and send all unscoped metrics.

  Thank you to @texpert for providing details of their situation to help resolve the issue.

• Bugfix: gRPC instrumentation causes ArgumentError when other Google gems are present

  Previously, when the agent had gRPC instrumentation enabled in an application using other gems (such as google-ads-googleads), the instrumentation could cause the error ArgumentError: wrong number of arguments (given 3, expected 2). The gRPC instrumentation has been updated to prevent this issue from occurring in the future.

  Thank you to @FeminismIsAwesome for bringing this issue to our attention.

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly and at a minimum every 3 months. As of this release, the oldest supported version is 6.5.0.357.

v8.10.0

• New gRPC instrumentation

  The agent will now instrument gRPC activity performed by clients and servers that use the grpc RubyGem. Instrumentation is automatic and enabled by default, so gRPC users should not need to modify any existing application code or agent configuration to benefit from the instrumentation. The instrumentation makes use of distributed tracing for a comprehensive overview of all gRPC traffic taking place across multiple monitored applications. This allows you to observe your client and server activity using any service that adheres to the W3C standard.

  The following new configuration parameters have been added for gRPC. All are optional.

  Configuration name	Default	Behavior
  instrumentation.grpc_client	auto	Set to 'disabled' to disable, set to 'chain' if there are module prepending conflicts
  instrumentation.grpc_server	auto	Set to 'disabled' to disable, set to 'chain' if there are module prepending conflicts
  instrumentation.grpc.host_denylist	""	Provide a comma delimited list of host regex patterns (ex: "private.com$,exception.*")

• Code-level metrics functionality is enabled by default

  The code-level metrics functionality for the Ruby agent's CodeStream integration is now enabled by default after we have received positive feedback and no open bugs for the past two releases.

• Performance: Rework timing range overlap calculations for multiple transaction segments

  Many thanks to GitHub community members @bmulholland and @hkdnet. @bmulholland alerted us to rmosolgo/graphql-ruby#3945. That Issue essentially notes that the New Relic Ruby agent incurs a significant perfomance hit when the graphql RubyGem (which ships with New Relic Ruby agent support) is used with DataLoader to generate a high number of transactions. Then @hkdnet diagnosed the root cause in the Ruby agent and put together both a proof of concept fix and a full blown PR to resolve the problem. The agent keeps track multiple segments that are concurrently in play for a given transaction in order to merge the ones whose start and stop times intersect. The logic for doing this find-and-merge operation has been reworked to a) be deferred entirely until the transaction is ready to be recorded, and b) made more performant when it is needed. GraphQL DataLoader users and other users who generate lots of activity for monitoring within a short amount of time will hopefully see some good performance gains from these changes.

• Performance: Make frozen string literals the default for the agent

  The Ruby frozen_string_literal: true magic source code comment has now been applied consistently across all Ruby files belonging to the agent. This can provide a performance boost, given that Ruby can rely on the strings remaining immutable. Previously only about a third of the agent's code was freezing string literals by default. Now that 100% of the code freezes string literals by default, we have internally observed some related performance gains through testing. We are hopeful that these will translate into some real world gains in production capacities.

• Bugfix: Error when setting the yaml configuration with transaction_tracer.transaction_threshold: apdex_f

  Originally, the agent was only checking the transaction_tracer.transaction_threshold from the newrelic.yml correctly if it was on two lines.

  Example:

  # newrelic.yml
  transaction_tracer:
    transaction_threshold: apdex_f

  Copier

  When this was instead changed to be on one line, the agent was not able to correctly identify the value of apdex_f.

  Example:

  # newrelic.yml
  transaction_tracer.transaction_threshold: apdex_f

  Copier

  This would cause prevent transactions from finishing due to the error ArgumentError: comparison of Float with String failed. This has now been corrected and the agent is able to process newrelic.yml with a one line transaction_tracer.transaction_threshold: apdex_f correctly now.

  Thank you to @oboxodo for bringing this to our attention.

• Bugfix: Don't modify frozen Logger

  Previously the agent would modify each instance of the Logger class by adding a unique instance variable as part of the instrumentation. This could cause the error FrozenError: can't modify frozen Logger to be thrown if the Logger instance had been frozen. The agent will now check if the object is frozen before attempting to modify the object. Thanks to @mkcosta for bringing this issue to our attention.

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly and at a minimum every 3 months. As of this release, the oldest supported version is 6.5.0.357.

v8.9.0

• Add support for Dalli 3.1.0 to Dalli 3.2.2

  Dalli versions 3.1.0 and above include breaking changes where the agent previously hooked into the gem. We have updated our instrumentation to correctly hook into Dalli 3.1.0 and above. At this time, 3.2.2 is the latest Dalli version and is confirmed to be supported.

• Bugfix: Infinite Tracing hung on connection restart

  Previously, when using infinite tracing, the agent would intermittently encounter a deadlock when attempting to restart the infinite tracing connection. This bug would prevent the agent from sending all data types, including non-infinite-tracing-related data. This change reworks how we restart Infinite Tracing to prevent potential deadlocks.

• Bugfix: Use read_nonblock instead of read on pipe

  Previously, our PipeChannelManager was using read which could cause resque jobs to get stuck in some versions. This change updates the PipeChannelManager to use read_nonblock instead to avoid this issue.

Support statement

New Relic recommends that you upgrade the agent regularly and at a minimum every 3 months. As of this release, the oldest supported version is 6.5.0.357.