Kong 2.0.0rc2 released!

[hisham]

Hi there, Kong Nation!

Happy new year! We’re happy to share with you the second release candidate for our next major release, Kong 2.0.0rc2!

Kong 2.0 major new features such as Hybrid mode, Go language support for plugins and buffered proxying, and much more. Kong 2.0 also removes the deprecated service mesh functionality, which was been retired in favor of Kuma, as Kong continues to focus on its core gateway capabilities.

Kong 2.0.0rc2 release also includes bug fixes added since rc1, including all fixes bundled in Kong 1.4.3.

Download

Download Kong 2.0.0rc2 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.

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What’s new since 2.0.0rc1

• Usability fixes for Go support:
  • Kong manages the lifecycle of the Go language plugin server by itself #5366
  • godoc documentation for Go PDK go-pdk#18
• Fixes for use of TLS connections in stream mode #5346
• Improvements to the Nginx injections system #5390
• Plus all fixes from Kong 1.4.3

And a recap of what’s coming in Kong 2.0

• 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), and v1 (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 support on_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
• CLI
  • kong config init now accepts a filename argument #4451
• Configuration
  • Enable reuseport option in the listen directive by default and allow specifying both reuseport and backlog=N in the listener flags. #5332
  • Check existence of lua_ssl_trusted_certificate at startup #5345
• Admin API
  • Added /upstreams/<id>/health?balancer_health=1 attribute for detailed information about balancer health based on health threshold configuration #5206
• PDK
  • New functions kong.service.request.enable_buffering, kong.service.response.get_raw_body and kong.service.response.get_body for use with buffered proxying #5315
• 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 as aws-lambda, or request-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

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Quick start for new features

Hybrid mode: to get started, 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.

Go language support: for Go plugin support, here’s a preview of our upcoming documentation for the feature as we are working on it. You can also refer to the Go PDK reference documentation, as well as check out some of our sample plugins and the go-pluginserver repositories. Note that when using Kong’s binary packages for 2.0.0rc2, Go plugins need to be built with Go 1.13. We’re looking into ways to loosen this restriction if possible. Stay tuned!

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Here’s a link to the 2.0.0rc2 Changelog.

Updated Docker images should be live soon on Docker Hub.

The recommended upgrade path is the usual one, and is detailed in the 2.0 Upgrade Path

Once again, 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 GitHub issues is the place for bug reports.

Thank you all for the feedback for the past release candidate, and let’s move one more step towards the best Kong release ever!

Happy Konging!