Hi there, Kong Nation!
We’re happy to share with you the first release candidate for our next major release, Kong 2.0.0rc1!
It includes major new features such as Hybrid mode, Go language support for plugins and buffered proxying, and much more.
Kong 2.0.0rc1 removes the deprecated service mesh functionality, which was been retired in favor of Kuma, as Kong continues to focus on its core gateway capabilities. This release also includes a few bug fixes added since Kong 1.4.2.
Download
Download Kong 2.0.0rc1 today — as always we are looking forward to your feedback!
For more details about the updated installation, please visit the official docs: https://konghq.com/install.
What’s new in Kong 2.0.0rc1
-
Major new features
- Hybrid mode for management of control-plane and data-plane nodes. This allows running control-plane nodes using a database and have them deliver configuration updates to DB-less data-plane nodes. #5294
- Buffered proxying - plugins can now request buffered reading of the service response (as opposed to the streaming default), allowing them to modify headers based on the contents of the body #5234
- Go plugin support - plugins can now be written in Go as well as Lua, through the use of an out-of-process Go plugin server. #5326
-
Core
- New property
path_handling
for managing construction of paths in Routes, including two different algorithms:v0
(the new default, same algorithm as Kong 0.x), andv1
(algorithm used in Kong 1.x, maintained for compatibility). Migrations automatically detect which version you are migrating from and adjust the algorithm in your routes accordingly. #5360 - The
transformations
in DAO schemas now also supporton_read
, allowing for two-way (read/write) data transformations between Admin API input/output and database storage. #5100 - Added
threshold
attribute for health checks #5206 - Caches for core entities and plugin-controlled entities (such as credentials, etc.) are now separated, protecting the core entities from cache eviction caused by plugin behavior. #5114
- Cipher suite was updated to the Mozilla v5 release. #5342
- Better support for using already existing Cassandra keyspaces when migrating
#5361 - Better log messages when plugin modules fail to load #5357
- New property
-
CLI
-
kong config init
now accepts a filename argument #4451
-
- Configuration
-
Admin API
- Added
/upstreams/<id>/health?balancer_health=1
attribute for detailed information about balancer health based on health threshold configuration #5206
- Added
-
PDK
- New functions
kong.service.request.enable_buffering
,kong.service.response.get_raw_body
andkong.service.response.get_body
for use with buffered proxying #5315
- New functions
-
Plugins
- New plugin: ACME - Let’s Encrypt and ACMEv2 integration with Kong! #5333
- aws-lambda: bumped version to 3.0.1, with a number of new features! #5083
- prometheus: bumped to version 0.7.0 including major performance improvements #5295
- zipkin: bumped to version 0.2.1 #5239
- session: bumped to version 2.2.0, adding
authenticated_groups
support #5108 - rate-limiting: added experimental support for standardized headers based on the ongoing RFC draft #5335
- rate-limiting: added Retry-After header on HTTP 429 responses #5329
- datadog: report metrics with tags – Thanks mvanholsteijn for the patch! #5154
- request-size-limiting: added
size_unit
configuration option. #5214 - request-termination: add extra check for
conf.message
before sending response back with body object included. #5202 - jwt: add
X-Credential-Identifier
header in response – Thanks davinwang for the patch! #4993
-
Fixes
- Correct detection of update upon deleting Targets – Thanks pyrl247 for the patch!
- Fix declarative config loading of entities with abstract records #5343
- Fixed behavior of PUT for
/certificates
#5321 - Corrected the behavior when overwriting a Service configuration using the
url
shorthand #5315 - acl: Fixed error when retrieving ACL by group when consumers share the same group #5322
-
Removed Service Mesh support - That has been deprecated in Kong 1.4 and made off-by-default already, and the code is now be gone in 2.0. For Service Mesh, we now have Kuma, which is something designed for Mesh patterns from day one, so we feel at peace with removing Kong’s native Service Mesh functionality and focus on its core capabilities as a gateway.
- As part of service mesh removal, serviceless proxying was removed. You can still set
service = null
when creating a route for use with serverless plugins such asaws-lambda
, orrequest-termination
. #5353 - Removed the
origins
property which was used for service mesh. #5351 - Removed the
transparent
property which was used for service mesh. #5350 - Removed the Sidecar Injector plugin which was used for service mesh. #5199
- As part of service mesh removal, serviceless proxying was removed. You can still set
Quick start for new features
To get started with Hybrid Mode, please check out this preview of our upcoming
documentation for the feature. It guides you step-by-step for using Kong nodes with separate Control Plane and Data Plane roles and have the Control Plane nodes manage the Kong datastore and update the DB-less Data Plane nodes.
For Go plugin support, detailed documentation is upcoming. In the meantime, you can check out some of our sample plugins and the go-pluginserver repositories. Note that when using Kong’s binary packages for 2.0.0rc1, Go plugins need to be built with Go 1.13. We’re looking into ways to loosen this restriction if possible. Stay tuned!
Here’s a link to the 2.0.0rc1 Changelog.
Updated Docker images are live on Docker Hub.
The recommended upgrade path is the usual one, and is detailed in the 2.0 Upgrade Path
We encourage everyone to run this release candidate in their test environments and give us your feedback! This forum is a great way to ask questions or post feedback, and the GitHub issues is the place for bug reports.
We’re looking forward to get feedback in this release candidate series! Thank you all in advance, and let’s make this the best Kong release ever!