Ruby agent release notesRSS

v8.7.0

• APM logs-in-context log forwarding on by default

  Automatic application log forwarding is now enabled by default. This version of the agent will automatically send enriched application logs to New Relic. To learn more about about this feature see here, and additional configuration options are available here. To learn about how to toggle log ingestion on or off by account see here.

• Improved async support and Thread instrumentation

  Previously, the agent was not able to record events and metrics inside Threads created inside of an already running transaction. This release includes 2 new configuration options to support multithreaded applications to automatically instrument threads. A new configuration option,instrumentation.thread.tracing (disabled by default), has been introduced that, when enabled, will allow the agent to insert New Relic tracing inside of all Threads created by an application. To support applications that only want some threads instrumented by New Relic, a new class is available, NewRelic::TracedThread, that will create a thread that includes New Relic instrumentation, see our API documentation for more details.

  New configuration options included in this release:

  Configuration name	Default	Behavior
  instrumentation.thread	auto (enabled)	Allows the agent to correctly nest spans inside of an asyncronous transaction.
  instrumentation.thread.tracing	false (disabled)	Automatically add tracing to all Threads created in the application. This may be enabled by default in a future release.

  We'd like to thank @mikeantonelli for sharing a gist with us that provided our team with an entry point for this feature.

• Deprecate support for Ruby 2.2

  Ruby 2.2 reached end of life on March 31, 2018. The agent has deprecated support for Ruby 2.2 and will make breaking changes for this version in its next major release.

• Added updated configuration options for transaction events and deprecated previous configs

  This release deprecates the following instrumentation:

  Deprecated	Replacement
  ActiveMerchant 1.64.0 or lower	ActiveMerchant 1.65.0 or higher
  ActiveRecord 3.2.22.5 or lower	ActiveRecord 4.0.0 or higher
  Acts As Solr (all versions)	none
  Authlogic (all versions)	none
  Bunny 2.6.7 or lower	Bunny 2.7.0 or higher
  Dalli 2.7.6 or lower	Dalli 2.7.7 or higher
  DataMapper (all versions)	none
  Delayed Job 4.1.2 or lower	Delayed Job 4.1.3 or higher
  Excon 0.55.0 or lower	Excon 0.56.0 or higher
  Grape 0.19.1 or lower	Grape 0.19.2 or higher
  HTTPClient 2.8.2.4 or lower	HTTPClient 2.8.3
  HTTP.rb 2.2.1 or lower	HTTP.rb 2.2.2 or higher
  Mongo 2.4.0 or lower	Mongo 2.4.1 or higher
  Padrino 0.14.4 or lower	Padrino 0.15.0 or higher
  Passenger 5.1.2 or lower	Passenger 5.1.3 or higher
  Puma 3.8.2 or lower	Puma 3.9.0 or higher
  Rack 1.6.7 or lower	Rack 1.6.8 or higher
  Rails 3.2.22.5 or lower	Rails 4.0.0 or higher
  Rainbows (all versions)	none
  Sequel 4.44.0 or lower	Sequel 4.45.0 or higher
  Sidekiq 4.2.10 or lower	Sidekiq 5.0.0 or higher
  Sinatra 1.4.8 or lower	Sinatra 2.0.0 or higher
  Sunspot (all versions)	none
  Typhoeus 1.1.2 or lower	Typhoeus 1.3.0 or higher
  Unicorn 5.2.0 or lower	Unicorn 5.3.0 or higher

  For the gems with deprecated versions, we will no longer test those versions in our multiverse suite. They may, however, still be compatible with the agent. We will no longer fix bug reports for issues with these versions of the gem.

• Internally leverage Object.const_get and Object.const_defined?

  When dynamically checking for or obtaining a handle to a class constant from a string, leverage the Object class's built in methods wherever possible to enjoy simpler, more performant operations. All JRubies and CRubies v2.5 and below need a bit of assistance beyond what Object can provide given that those Rubies may yield an unwanted constant from a different namespace than the one that was specified. But for all other Rubies and even for those Rubies in contexts where we can 100% trust the string value coming in, leverage the Object class's methods and reap the benefits.

• Clarify documentation for rake.tasks configuration

  The rake.tasks description in the default newrelic.yml file and the New Relic Ruby Agent Configuration docs have been updated to clarify its behavior and usage. The documentation now reads:

  Specify an array of Rake tasks to automatically instrument. This configuration option converts the Array to a RegEx list. If you'd like to allow all tasks by default, use rake.tasks: [.+]. Rake tasks will not be instrumented unless they're added to this list. For more information, visit the (New Relic Rake Instrumentation docs)[/docs/apm/agents/ruby-agent/background-jobs/rake-instrumentation].

  We thank @robotfelix for suggesting these changes.

• Enable Environment Variables setting Array configurations to be converted to Arrays

  Prior to this change, when comma-separated lists were passed as environment variables, an error would be emitted to the newrelic_agent.log and a String would be set as the value. Now, Arrays will be accurately coerced.

• Bugfix: Allow TransactionEvents to be sampled at the expected rate

  The transaction_events.max_samples_stored capacity value within the TransactionEventAggregator did not match up with its expected harvest cycle interval, causing TransactionEvents to be over-sampled. This bugfix builds upon the updates made in #952 so that the interval and capacity behave as expected for the renamed transaction_events* configuration options.

• Bugfix: Error events missing attributes when created outside of a transaction

  Previously the agent was not assigning a priority to error events that were created by calling notice_error outside the scope of a transaction. This caused issues with sampling when the error event buffer was full, resulting in a NoMethodError: undefined method '<' for nil:NilClass in the newrelic_agent.log. This bugfix ensures that a priority is always assigned on error events so that the agent will be able to sample these error events correctly. Thank you to @olleolleolle 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 5.7.0.350.

v8.6.0

• Telemetry-in-Context: Automatic Application Logs, a quick way to view logs no matter where you are in the platform

  • Adds support for forwarding application logs to New Relic. This automatically sends application logs that have been enriched to power Telemetry-in-Context. This is disabled by default in this release. This may be on by default in a future release.
  • Adds support for enriching application logs written to disk or standard out. This can be used with another log forwarder to power Telemetry-in-Context if in-agent log forwarding is not desired. We recommend enabling either log forwarding or local log decorating, but not both features. This is disabled by default in this release.
  • Improves speed and Resque support for logging metrics which shows the rate of log message by severity in the Logs chart in the APM Summary view. This is enabled by default in this release.

  To learn more about Telemetry-in-Context and the configuration options please see the documentation here.

• Bugfix: Curb - satify method_with_tracing's verb argument requirement

  When Curb instrumentation is used (either via prepend or chain), be sure to always pass the verb argument over to method_with_tracing which requires it. Thank you to @knarewski for bringing this issue to our attention, for providing a means of reproducing an error, and for providing a fix. That fix has been replicated by the agent team with permission. See Issue 1033 for more details.

• Improve the usage of the 'hostname' executable and other executables

  In all places where a call to an executable binary is made (currently this is done only for the 'hostname' and 'uname' binaries), leverage a new helper method when making the call. This new helper will a) not attempt to execute the binary if it cannot be found, and b) prevent STDERR/STDOUT content from appearing anywhere except New Relic's own logs if the New Relic logger is set to the 'debug' level. When calling 'hostname', fall back to Socket.gethostname if the 'hostname' binary cannot be found. When calling 'uname', fall back on using a value of 'unknown' if the 'uname' command fails. Many thanks to @metaskills and @brcarp for letting us know that Ruby AWS Lambda functions can't invoke 'hostname' and for providing ideas and feedback with Issue #697.

• Documentation: remove confusing duplicate RUM entry from newrelic.yml

  The browser_monitoring.auto_instrument configuration option to enable web page load timing (RUM) was confusingly listed twice in the newrelic.yml config file. This option is enabled by default. The newrelic.yml file has been updated to list the option only once. Many thanks to @robotfelix for bringing this to our attention with Issue #955.

• Bugfix: fix unit test failures when New Relic environment variables are present

  Previously, unit tests would fail with unexpected invocation errors when NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY and NEW_RELIC_HOST environment variables were present. Now, tests will discard these environment variables before running.

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 6.3.0.355.

v8.5.0

• AWS: Support IMDSv2 by using a token with metadata API calls

  When querying AWS for instance metadata, include a token in the request headers. If an AWS user configures instances to require a token, the agent will now work. For instances that do not require the inclusion of a token, the agent will continue to work in that context as well.

• Muffle anticipated stderr warnings for "hostname" calls

  When using the hostname binary to obtain hostname information, redirect STDERR to /dev/null. Thanks very much to @frenkel for raising this issue on behalf of OpenBSD users everywhere and for providing a solution with PR #965.

• Added updated configuration options for transaction events and deprecated previous configs This release deprecates and replaces the following configuration options:

• Eliminated warnings for redefined constants in ParameterFiltering

  Fixed the ParameterFiltering constant definitions so that they are not redefined on multiple reloads of the module. Thank you to @TonyArra for bringing this issue to our attention.

• Docker for development

  Docker and Docker Compose may now be used for local development and testing with the provided Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml files in the project root. See DOCKER.md for usage instructions.

• Bugfix: Rails 5 + Puma errors in rack "can't add a new key into hash during iteration"

  When using rails 5 with puma, the agent would intermittently cause rack to raise a RuntimeError: can't add a new key into hash during iteration. We have identified the source of the error in our instrumentation and corrected the behavior so it no longer interferes with rack. Thanks to @sasharevzin for bringing attention to this error and providing a reproduction of the issue for us to investigate.

• CI: target JRuby 9.3.3.0

  Many thanks to @ahorek for PR #919, PR #921, and PR #922 to keep us up to date on the JRuby side of things. The agent is now actively being tested against JRuby 9.3.3.0. NOTE that this release does not contain any non-CI related changes for JRuby. Old agent versions are still expected to work with newer JRubies, and the newest agent version is still expected to work with older JRubies.

• CI: Update unit tests for Rails 7.0.2

  Ensure that the 7.0.2 release of Rails is fully compatible with all relevant tests.

• CI: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

  To stay current and secure, our CI automation is now backed by version 20.04 of Ubuntu's long term support offering (previously 18.04).

v8.4.0

• Provide basic support for Rails 7.0

  This release includes Rails 7.0 as a tested Rails version. Updates build upon the agent's current Rails instrumentation and do not include additional instrumentation for new features.

• Improve the performance of NewRelic::Agent::GuidGenerator#generate_guid

  This method is called by many basic operations within the agent including transactions, datastore segments, and external request segments. Thank you, @jdelstrother for contributing this performance improvement!

• Documentation: Development environment prep instructions

  The multiverse collection of test suites requires a variety of data handling software (MySQL, Redis, memcached, etc.) to be available on the machine running the tests. The project documentation has been updated to outline the relevant software packages, and a Brewfile file has been added to automate software installation with Homebrew.

• Bugfix: Add ControllerInstrumentation::Shims to Sinatra framework

  When the agent is disabled by setting the configuration settings enabled, agent_enabled, and/or monitor_mode to false, the agent loads shims for public controller instrumentation methods. These shims were missing for the Sinatra framework, causing applications to crash if the agent was disabled. Thank you, @NC-piercej for bringing this 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 5.7.0.350.

v8.3.0

• Updated the agent to support Ruby 3.1.0

  Most of the changes involved updating the multiverse suite to exclude runs for older versions of instrumented gems that are not compatible with Ruby 3.1.0. In addition, Infinite Tracing testing was updated to accommodate YAML::unsafe_load for Psych 4 support.

• Bugfix: Update AdaptiveSampler#sampled? algorithm

  One of the clauses in AdaptiveSampler#sampled? would always return false due to Integer division returning a result of zero. This method has been updated to use Float division instead, to exponentially back off the number of samples required. This may increase the number of traces collected for transactions. A huge thank you to @romul for bringing this to our attention and breaking down the problem!

• Bugfix: Correctly encode ASCII-8BIT log messages

  The encoding update for the DecoratingLogger in v8.2.0 did not account for ASCII-8BIT encoded characters qualifying as valid_encoding?. Now, ASCII-8BIT characters will be encoded as UTF-8 and include replacement characters as needed. We're very grateful for @nikajukic's collaboration and submission of a test case to resolve 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 5.6.0.349.

v8.2.0

• New instrumentation for Tilt gem

  Template rendering using Tilt is now instrumented. Tilt 2.x is supported for Ruby versions 2.2 and above and 1.x is supported for Ruby versions below 2.7. See PR #847 for details.

• Configuration error_collector.ignore_errors is marked as deprecated

  This setting has been marked as deprecated in the documentation since version 7.2.0 and is now flagged as deprecated within the code.

• Remove Rails 2 instrumentation

  Though any version of Rails 2 has not been supported by the Ruby agent since v3.18.1.330, instrumentation for ActionController and ActionWebService specific to that version were still part of the agent. This instrumentation has been removed.

• Remove duplicated settings from newrelic.yml

  Thank you @jakeonfire for bringing this to our attention and @kuroponzu for making the changes!

• Bugfix: Span events recorded when using newrelic_ignore

  Previously, the agent was incorrectly recording span events only on transactions that should be ignored. This fix will prevent any span events from being created for transactions using newrelic_ignore, or ignored through the rules.ignore_url_regexes configuration option.

• Bugfix: Print deprecation warning for cross-application tracing if enabled

  Prior to this change, the deprecation warning would log whenever the agent started up, regardless of configuration. Thank you @alpha-san for bringing this to our attention!

• Bugfix: Scrub non-unicode characters from DecoratingLogger

  To prevent JSON::GeneratorErrors, the DecoratingLogger replaces non-Unicode characters with the replacement character: �. Thank you @jdelStrother for bringing this to our attention!

• Bugfix: Distributed tracing headers emitted errors when agent was not connected

  Previously, when the agent had not yet connected it would fail to create a trace context payload and emit an error, "TypeError: no implicit conversion of nil into String," to the agent logs. The correct behavior in this situation is to not create these headers due to the lack of required information. Now, the agent will not attempt to create trace context payloads until it has connected. Thank you @Izzette for bringing this 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 5.5.0.348.

v8.1.0

• Instrumentation for Ruby standard library Logger

  The agent will now automatically instrument Logger, recording number of lines and size of logging output, with breakdown by severity.

• Bugfix for Padrino instrumentation

  A bug was introduced to the way the agent installs padrino instrumentation in 7.0.0. This release fixes the issues with the padrino instrumentation. Thanks to @sriedel for bringing this issue to our attention.

• Bugfix: Stop deadlocks between New Relic thread and Delayed Job sampling thread

  Running the agent's polling queries for the DelayedJobSampler within the same ActiveRecord connection decreases the frequency of deadlocks in development environments. Thanks @jdelStrother for bringing this to our attention and providing excellent sample code to speed up development!

• Bugfix: Allow Net::HTTP request to IPv6 addresses

  The agent will no longer raise an URI::InvalidURIError error if an IPv6 address is passed to Net::HTTP. Thank you @tristinbarnett and @tabathadelane for crafting a solution!

• Bugfix: Allow integers to be passed to error_collector.ignore_status_codes configuration

  Integers not wrapped in quotation marks can be passed to error_collector.ignore_status_codes in the newrelic.yml file. Our thanks goes to @elaguerta and @brammerl for resolving this issue!

• Bugfix: allow add_method_tracer to be used on BasicObjects

  Previously, our add_method_tracer changes referenced self.class which is not available on BasicObjects. This has been fixed. Thanks to @toncid 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 5.4.0.347.

v8.0.0

• add_method_tracer refactored to use prepend over alias_method chaining

  This release overhauls the implementation of add_method_tracer, as detailed in issue #502. The main breaking updates are as follows:

  • A metric name passed to add_method_tracer will no longer be interpolated in an instance context as before. To maintain this behavior, pass a Proc object with the same arity as the method being traced. For example:

    # OLD
      add_method_tracer :foo, '#{args[0]}.#{args[1]}'
    
      # NEW
      add_method_tracer :foo, -> (*args) { "#{args[0]}.#{args[1]}" }

    Copier

  • Similarly, the :code_header and :code_footer options to add_method_tracer will only accept a Proc object, which will be bound to the calling instance when the traced method is invoked.

  • Calling add_method_tracer for a method will overwrite any previously defined tracers for that method. To specify multiple metric names for a single method tracer, pass them to add_method_tracer as an array.

  See updated documentation on the following pages for full details:

  • Ruby Custom Instrumentation: Method Tracers
  • MethodTracer::ClassMethods#add_method_tracer

• Distributed tracing is enabled by default

  Distributed tracing tracks and observes service requests as they flow through distributed systems. Distributed tracing is now enabled by default and replaces cross application tracing.

• Bugfix: Incorrectly loading configuration options from newrelic.yml

  The agent will now import the configuration options error_collector.ignore_messages and error_collector.expected_messages from the newrelic.yml file correctly.

• Cross Application is now deprecated, and disabled by default

  Distributed tracing is replacing cross application tracing as the default means of tracing between services. To continue using it, enable it with cross_application_tracer.enabled: true and distributed_tracing.enabled: false

• Update configuration option default value for span_events.max_samples_stored from 1000 to 2000

  For more information about this congfiguration option, visit the Ruby agent documentation.

• Agent now enforces server supplied maximum value for configuration option span_events.max_samples_stored

  Upon connection to the New Relic servers, the agent will now enforce a maximum value allowed for the configuration option span_events.max_samples_stored sent from the New Relic servers.

• Remove Ruby 2.0 required kwarg compatibility checks

  Our agent has code that provides compatibility for required keyword arguments in Ruby versions below 2.1. Since the agent now only supports Ruby 2.2+, this code is no longer required.

• Replace Time.now with Process.clock_gettime

  Calls to Time.now have been replaced with calls to Process.clock_gettime to leverage the system's built-in clocks for elapsed time (Process::CLOCK_MONOTONIC) and wall-clock time (Process::CLOCK_REALTIME). This results in fewer object allocations, more accurate elapsed time records, and enhanced performance. Thanks to @sdemjanenko and @viraptor for advocating for this change!

• Updated generated default newrelic.yml

  Thank you @wyhaines and @creaturenex for your contribution. The default newrelic.yml that the agent can generate is now updated with commented out examples of all configuration options.

• Bugfix: Psych 4.0 causes errors when loading newrelic.yml

  Psych 4.0 now uses safe load behavior when using YAML.load which by default doesn't allow aliases, causing errors when the agent loads the config file. We have updated how we load the config file to avoid these errors.

• Remove support for Excon versions below 0.19.0

  Excon versions below 0.19.0 will no longer be instrumented through the Ruby agent.

• Remove support for Mongo versions below 2.1

  Mongo versions below 2.1 will no longer be instrumented through the Ruby agent.

• Remove tests for Rails 3.0 and Rails 3.1

  As of the 7.0 release, the Ruby agent stopped supporting Rails 3.0 and Rails 3.1. Despite this, we still had tests for these versions running on the agent's CI. Those tests are now removed.

• Update test Gemfiles for patched versions

  The gem has individual Gemfiles it uses to test against different common user setups. Rails 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1 have been updated to the latest patch versions in the test Gemfiles. Rack was updated in the Rails61 test suite to 2.1.4 to resolve a security vulnerability.

• Remove Merb Support

  This release removes the remaining support for the Merb framework. It merged with Rails during the 3.0 release. Now that the Ruby agent supports Rails 3.2 and above, we thought it was time to say goodbye.

• Remove deprecated method External.start_segment

  The method NewRelic::Agent::External.start_segment has been deprecated as of Ruby Agent 6.0.0. This method is now removed.

• Added testing and support for the following gem versions

  • activemerchant 1.121.0
  • bunny 2.19.0
  • excon 0.85.0
  • mongo 2.14.0, 2.15.1
  • padrino 0.15.1
  • resque 2.1.0
  • sequel 5.48.0
  • yajl-ruby 1.4.1

• This version adds support for ARM64/Graviton2 platform using Ruby 3.0.2+

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 5.4.0.347.

v7.2.0

• Expected Errors and Ignore Errors This release adds support for configuration of expected/ignored errors by class name, status code, and message. The following configuration options are now available:

  • error_collector.ignore_classes
  • error_collector.ignore_messages
  • error_collector.ignore_status_codes
  • error_collector.expected_classes
  • error_collector.expected_messages
  • error_collector.expected_status_codes For more details about expected and ignored errors, please see our configuration documentation

• Bugfix: resolves "can't add a new key into hash during iteration" Errors

  Thanks to @wyhaines for this fix that prevents "can't add a new key into hash during iteration" errors from occuring when iterating over environment data.

• Bugfix: kwarg support fixed for Rack middleware instrumentation

  Thanks to @walro for submitting this fix. This fixes the rack instrumentation when using kwargs.

• Update known conflicts with use of Module#Prepend

  With our release of v7.0.0, we updated our instrumentation to use Module#Prepend by default, instead of method chaining. We have received reports of conflicts and added a check for these known conflicts. If a known conflict with prepend is detected while using the default value of 'auto' for gem instrumentation, the agent will instead install method chaining instrumentation in order to avoid this conflict. This check can be bypassed by setting the instrumentation method for the gem to 'prepend'.

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 5.2.0.345.