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Dear Rudder community,<br>
<br>
<p> We are very proud to announce that we have just released a new
version: Rudder 5.0.0.</p>
<p>First of all, a small word about what guided us during the
development of this version:</p>
<p>The initial Rudder model consisting of a single software block
which includes all features, thus imposing a greater and greater
complexity on all of our users, has reached its limits. We have
now reached a sufficient understanding of the domain, its
challenges, and the way Rudder is used, to make us realize that
this all-in-one model is not, or is no longer, the best suited.<br>
</p>
<p>That's why our main focus on this version was to create a plugin
ecosystem for Rudder.<br>
<br>
We'll go into details in the following section of this mail with a
list of the main changes Rudder 5.0 brings to you:<br>
</p>
<p><em>New plugin ecosystem</em>: Version 5.0 introduces a plugin
ecosystem that gathers Rudder’s most
specific features. This way, only essential features have to be
installed by default and
advanced features can be used on a case by case basis. So what is
essential and what is not?
The basic rule is that the essential experience must contain the
features used by 80% or more
of users, whatever the scale of use. In other words, we keep as
core features everything that
delivers on Rudder’s initial promise: enabling users to
continuously audit and enforce
configurations with an easy to use webapp providing visual
reporting. The remaining 20%
solve needs that are no less important, only less common (PDF
compliance reports, UI branding,
scale-out relay servers, validation workflow…). To know everything
about the impact of this
evolution, you can read the detailed dedicated article:</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.normation.com/en/blog/2018/09/26/rudder-5-new-modular-version-thanks-ecosystem-plugins/">http://www.normation.com/en/blog/2018/09/26/rudder-5-new-modular-version-thanks-ecosystem-plugins/</a></p>
<p><em>Integration</em>: We provide integration with third party
tools as plugins, making Rudder more
integrated with tools like Ansible, Centreon, Zabbix, GLPI or
Vault.
Except for a few (ie. managing AIX and Windows host), plugins are
open source and source
code is available here: <a
href="https://github.com/normation/rudder-plugins/">https://github.com/normation/rudder-plugins/</a></p>
<p><em>New documentation</em>: Welcome to our brand new
documentation website
<a href="https://docs.rudder.io">docs.rudder.io</a>! Beyond its
fresh look (both on the online website
and in the embedded version), this new documentation includes
updated content and new resources,
like a “getting started” guide and examples of use-cases.</p>
<p><em>System API</em>: We built a new REST API that allows to
manage some advanced settings and perform
maintenance operations in Rudder, like triggering policy
generations, updating dynamic groups
and managing report archives. This was previously available in the
now deprecated V1 API
(<a
href="https://docs.rudder.io/history/4.3/rest-api.html#rest-api">https://docs.rudder.io/history/4.3/rest-api.html#rest-api</a>)
which will be removed in the next major version (5.1).</p>
<p><em>Debugging information script</em>: We created a script to
gather basic information about a Rudder setup when you want to
debug or understand Rudder’s behavior. This script fetches
log files and executes various commands, either to get information
from databases or directly
from the system (package versions, etc)</p>
<p><em>Automatic Technique upgrade</em>: Techniques provided with
Rudder can now be automatically upgraded
when you update Rudder. This process used to be manual because you
might have modified the
base Technique Library and we thought you may want to have more
control about the content
of your Technique Library. But it appears that this process was
forgotten by a majority of
our users and so many bug fixes and new versions were not
available after an upgrade.
By default this feature is enabled on new Rudder 5.0 installations
but is disabled on
upgrades from older versions, to prevent any accidental damage.</p>
<p><em>Support policy</em>: Our general policy is to maintain major
releases until 3 months after
the next major version is released to give some time for
upgrading. The ESR tag was
previously given to major releases that were maintained 6 months
after the next ESR
version was announced. Rudder 4.1 is the last ESR release.
For a slower major upgrade pace, Rudder subscription provides
long-term maintenance
up to 24 months after release (depending on the subscription
level) for Rudder versions.
Read the FAQ page for more information: <a
href="http://faq.rudder-project.org/forums/2-knowledge-base/topics/9-when-are-versions-published-and-how-long-are-they-maintained/">http://faq.rudder-project.org/forums/2-knowledge-base/topics/9-when-are-versions-published-and-how-long-are-they-maintained/</a></p>
<p><em>Packaging</em>: <em>Relay server support is now part of an
open-source plugin</em>, pre-compiled packages are available as
part of the Rudder subscription.</p>
<p>The agent package is now more modular: instead of embedding all
dependencies,
we are using system libraries on maintained operating systems,
to allow for a better system integration. As a consequence, the
experimental rudder-agent-thin (which had this exact goal) package
is not built anymore.</p>
<p><em>New repositories</em>: <a
href="https://repository.rudder.io/">https://repository.rudder.io/</a>
We are using new repositories for versions starting from 5.0. We
also provide all
previous releases in these new repos. We improved our build
system, files hierarchy,
and added more gpg signatures on distributed files (Rudder
sources, etc.)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><strong>Warning</strong>: A last note before upgrading (I know
you already typed the command, but read that please) , the
following features are now provided as plugins and no more
available as part of default Rudder
installation starting from 5.0:</p>
<ul>
<li>LDAP-based authentication</li>
<li>Relay servers</li>
<li>Changes validation workflow (change requests)</li>
</ul>
<p>If you were using them, upgrade will disable them and you will
have to install
the plugin.
Read (the plugins page on our website)[<a
href="http://rudder.io/plugins">http://rudder.io/plugins</a>]
for more information.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
The ChangeLog is available here: <span
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.rudder-project.org/changelog-5.0"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.rudder-project.org/changelog-5.0</a></span><br>
<br>
This version of Rudder is a final release. We have tested it
thoroughly and believe it to be free of any major bugs. This version
is now the latest version of Rudder.<br>
<br>
As always, check out <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.rudder-project.org/site/get-rudder/downloads/">https://www.rudder-project.org/site/get-rudder/downloads/</a>
for download links.<br>
<br>
We look forward to your feedback, be it comments on this list,
questions on Twitter (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://twitter.com/RudderProject">@RudderProject</a>) or on
IRC (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=rudder">#rudder</a> on
Freenode) , bug reports or feature requests (and of course GitHub
pull requests ;) ).<br>
<br>
Wishing you a pleasant day
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<td colspan="2"><b><img alt="Logo Normation"
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class="" width="50" hspace="10" height="50"
align="left"> <span class="sig">Vincent Membré</span></b><br>
<span class="sig"><i>Developer / Release manager</i></span><br>
<span class="sig"><a class="redlink"
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