Ruby agent v9.0.0

v9.0.0

Version 9.0.0 of the agent removes several deprecated configuration options and API methods, enables Thread tracing by default, adds Fiber instrumentation, removes support for Ruby versions 2.2 and 2.3, removes instrumentation for several deprecated gems, changes how the API method set_transaction_name works, and updates rails_defer_initialization to be an environment variable only configuration option.

• Remove deprecated configuration options

  The following configuration options have been removed and will no longer work. Please update all configs to use the replacements listed below. PR#1782

• Enable Thread instrumentation by default

  The configuration option instrumentation.thread.tracing is now enabled by default. This configuration allows the agent to properly monitor code occurring inside threads. In Ruby agent 9.0, instrumented code within threads will be recorded and associated with the current transaction when the thread was created.

  This may be a breaking change if you are currently using custom thread instrumentation. New transactions inside of threads will no longer be started if one already exists. PR#1767

• Add Fiber instrumentation

  Fiber instances are now automatically instrumented similarly to Thread instances. This can be configured using instrumentation.fiber. PR#1802

• Removed support for Ruby 2.2 and 2.3

  Ruby 2.2 and 2.3 are no longer supported by the Ruby agent. To continue using the latest Ruby Agent version, please update to Ruby 2.4.0 or above. PR#1778

• Removed deprecated instrumentation

  Instrumentation for the following gems had been previously deprecated and has now been removed. PR#1788

  • Acts As Solr
  • Authlogic
  • DataMapper
  • Rainbows
  • Sunspot

  Versions of the following technologies had been previously deprecated and are no longer supported.

  • Passenger: 2.2.x - 4.0.x
  • Puma: 2.0.x
  • Grape: 0.2.0
  • Padrino: 0.14.x
  • Rails: 3.2.x
  • Sinatra: 1.4.x, 1.5.x
  • Mongo: 1.8.x - 2.3.x
  • Sequel: 3.37.x, 4.0.x
  • Delayed_Job: 2.0.x - 4.0.x
  • Sidekiq: 4.2.x
  • Excon: below 0.55.0
  • HttpClient: 2.2.0 - 2.8.0
  • HttpRb: 0.9.9 - 2.2.1
  • Typhoeus: 0.5.3 - 1.2.x
  • Bunny: 2.0.x - 2.6.x
  • ActiveMerchant: 1.25.0 - 1.64.x

• Updated API method set_transaction_name

  When the method NewRelic::Agent.set_transaction_name is called, it will now always change the name and category of the currently running transaction to what is passed into the method. This is a change from previous agent versions.

  Previously, if set_transaction_name was called with a new transaction name and a new category that did not match the category already assigned to a transaction, neither the new name nor category would be saved to the transaction. If this method is being called in a situation in which it was previously ignored due to category differences, this will now change the name and category of the transaction. PR#1797

• Removed API method: NewRelic::Agent.disable_transaction_tracing

  The deprecated API method NewRelic::Agent.disable_transaction_tracing has been removed. Instead use either NewRelic::Agent#ignore_transaction to disable the recording of the current transaction or NewRelic::Agent.disable_all_tracing to yield a block without collecting any metrics or traces in any of the subsequent calls. PR#1792

• Renamed ActiveJob metrics

  Previously, ActiveJob was categorized as a message broker, which is inaccurate. We've updated the naming of ActiveJob traces from leading with MessageBroker/ActiveJob to simply leading with ActiveJob. PR#1811

• Code cleanup

  Thank you to community member @esquith for contributing some cleanup of orphaned constants in our code base. PR#1793 PR#1794 PR#1808

  Community member @fchatterji helped standardize how we reference NewRelic throughout our codebase PR#1795 and updated our README's community header PR#1815. Thanks fchatterji!

• Bugfix: Allow rails initialization to be deferred by environment variable

  The Ruby agent may force some Rails libraries to load on agent initialization, preventing some settings defined in config/initializers from being applied. Changing the initialization process to run after config/initializers, however, may break the configuration for other gems (ex. Roadie Rails).

  For those having troubles with agent initialization and Rails initializers, you can now pass the environment variable NEW_RELIC_DEFER_RAILS_INITIALIZATION=true to make the agent initialize after config/initializers are run. This config option can only be set using an environment variable and can't be set using YAML. PR#1791

  Thanks to @jdelStrother for bringing this issue to our attention and testing our fixes along the way. Issue#662