4.x

[trentm]

This is a major version bump, primarily to move the min supported Node.js to v14.5.0 (from v8.6).

Prep checklist:

• merge David's two current fix PRs to "main"
• [david] sanity check a Kibana PR updating to an elastic-apm-node@4 (attempt update to elastic-apm-node@4 in Kibana #3556)
• [trent] For handle release/dist tags for published artifacts when there are multiple dev branches #2668, sanity check that the auto selection of the latest layer on https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/nodejs/current/lambda.html works properly. Will it find the latest major? Or the latest release date? Update: It will get it wrong. docs: use the 'latest' GH release API for the latest extension or agent release apm-aws-lambda#402 to fix.
• [trent] docs -> docs: update info on active branches; refresh the README #3601
  • Perhaps take the time now to refresh the README? Its doc links are poor.
  • update "Active release branches" section of the README.md (on "main") to include 3.x and main (for 4.x), and the "Node.js versions" section of supported-technologies doc page.
  • update this bullet in CONTRIBUTING.md in "main" (and perhaps 3.x, could cherry-pick it)

    If this is the for the latest major (currently 3.x)

• New change for "dev/4.x" PR: Drop 'nodejs12.x nodejs10.x' from Lambda layer compatible-runtimes (in ".ci/Makefile"). Sanity check if our Lambda docs need to be updated for this. chore: 4.x builds of the Lambda layer no longer support the Lambda nodejs12.x and nodejs10.x runtimes #3600
• [trent] finish the 4.x PR (4.x #3528):
  • merge latest changes from "main"
  • release "private": true publishing guard in package.json
  • [trent, david] carefully re-review it
  • review the changes to package-lock.json. There is more there than I expected. Why? Perhaps cleared after a merge of latest from "main"?
  • re-read the upgrade-to-v4.asciidoc guide. Perhaps get Brandon's team to review it?
  • there is at least one XXX (for the CHANGELOG4.asciidoc merge). Another in test/config.test.js.
  • add explicit "--latest" flag to gh release create ... per handle release/dist tags for published artifacts when there are multiple dev branches #2668 (comment)
  • add explicit "--tag=latest" to npm publish in release script
  • author a good commit message for this merge: 4.x #3528 (comment)
  • take it out of draft
• [trent] update docs.git for the new 4.x release docs version -> Update for a coming apm-agent-nodejs 4.x stream docs#2750

Ready to go steps/checklist (to be done in order):

• update "3.x" to the current HEAD commit on "main"
• merge the "dev/4.x" PR to main
• Do a first pass attempt at updating deps. See tracking delayed dep updates because of old Node support #2760 for the full list. Minimally it would be nice to update async-cache and string-similarity to avoid the "deprecated" warnings on npm install elastic-apm-node.
• (wait for Monday)
• make a "4.0.0" release PR and publish 4.0.0
• Do a "3.50.0" PR targetting the "3.x" branch. Be very sure to follow the "If this is a new major release, then:" steps in CONTRIBUTING.md -- the set --tag=latest-3 and --latest=false appropriately in the release steps. (Note: I want to do a 3.x release after the 4.0.0 release to see if the npm dist-tag stuff works properly. 4.0.0 should still be "latest" after this release.)
• Open an issue on the robots to add branch protection for the "3.x" branch (because releases will be done from it now).

[trentm]

Commit message:

feat!: the start of v4.x

Significant and breaking changes:
- Min supported Node.js is now 14.5.0 (up from 8.6).
- Drop support for the obsolete "patch" context manager, i.e. the
  `contextManager: "patch"` config option. This was a limited async context
  management that predated the preferred `AsyncLocalStorage` core Node.js
  mechanism for context tracking. (#3529)
- Config vars:
    - Remove `logUncaughtExceptions` config option, if the agent's
      `uncaughtException` handler is active it now *always* logs the error to
      the console. (#2412)
    - Remove `filterHttpHeaders` config option, see `sanitizeFieldNames`
      instead. (#3332)
    - Remove long deprecate `ELASTIC_APM_KUBERNETES_*` envvars, use
      `KUBERNETES_*` instead. (#2661)
    - The `useElasticTraceparentHeader` config option now defaults to `false`.
      This means the `elastic-apm-traceparent` HTTP header is now no longer
      sent by default. (#3555)
    - Drop erroneous `ELASTIC_SANITIZE_FIELD_NAMES` and
      `ELASTIC_IGNORE_MESSAGE_QUEUES` config envvars.
- Instrumentations:
    - Drop instrumentation for old `hapi`, the current `@hapi/hapi` is still
      instrumented. (#2691)
- APIs:
    - Ignore a `timer` option passed to `startTransaction()` and `startSpan()`
      APIs. (#2990)
    - Remove the deprecated `span.toString()` and `transaction.toString()` APIs.
      (#2348)
    - Change `apm.startTransaction()` API to return a noop transaction instead
      of null when the agent is not started. (#2429)
    - Remove `transaction.subtype` and `transaction.action` properties from the
      API. This also impacts <<apm-start-transaction>> and
      `transaction.setType(...)`, both of which now no longer accept `subtype`
      and `action` parameters. (#3557)

[david-luna]

do you think it's necessary to add 3.x here to run tests when doing maintenance PRs for bug fixing and such?

[trentm]

Yes, great point. I'll add that. And I guess we should remove dev/4.x before merging.

[trentm]

Added in commit 5ae4588.
(I'm not actually sure if instead we'll need this change to test.yml on the 3.x branch for it to be used for pushes and PR targetting 3.x. We shall see.)

[trentm]

• update "3.x" to the current HEAD commit on "main"

% git branch -f 3.x main && git push origin 3.x
Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
remote:
remote: GitHub found 3 vulnerabilities on elastic/apm-agent-nodejs's default branch (2 moderate, 1 low). To find out more, visit:
remote:      https://github.com/elastic/apm-agent-nodejs/security/dependabot
remote:
To github.com:elastic/apm-agent-nodejs.git
   f9f7ff21..7f8fd483  3.x -> 3.x

[trentm]

elastic/apm-aws-lambda#407 is required to get the elastic/apm-aws-lambda#402 fix on to the "8.9" branch, so that our apm-agent-nodejs 4.x docs build uses it. This will allow having a https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/nodejs/current/lambda.html doc page that uses the correct "latest version" Lambda layer, even if that is not the "latest in time" release (e.g. it'll point to a 4.0.0 release, even if there is a 3.50.0 release that comes later; or it'll point to 3.49.1 even if I do a later 4.0.0-rc.1 pre-release).