Raygun Feature Request

Feature Request

Automatically update APM agent

Current Status:

Planned

Votes:

12


Avatar

fujiiface

Just curious if there are plans to auto update the APM agent on the server. I've been reporting some performance issues with Joyce (and in turn the developers) and each time a new profiler is released, I have to manually download/install it.


Avatar

Raygun

John-Daniel Trask

Posted on
Nov 03 2018

Hi,

Yes, it is something we plan to support. There's a few technical wrinkles that we need to solve for. For example, if an update included a new profiler, it cannot be updated without an app pool restart. The agent could be, but that part can't be. We don't think it would be right to automatically restart an app pool though.

So coming up with a plan that makes it streamlined and keeps you in control of when you want changes to occur is what's taking some time. Unfortunately I don't have a good date for you at the moment.

As an aside, I do really appreciate the work you've been doing with us.

John-Daniel Trask

Avatar

fujiiface

Posted on
Nov 03 2018

Thanks for the response John and I do understand the challenge. I'll keep it on my radar. Also, glad to help with the testing on it. I think it has added a lot of value to the Crash Reporting/RUM offering already included in my platform plan. Keep up the great work!

Avatar

yguerdat

Posted on
Feb 26 2020

Yeah I like this idea too. We have develop a product in SaaS mode with a full automated upgrade deployment. It would be great to can update the agent via the same full automated procedure.

Like downloading it like a nuget and packaging it over the solution.

That can fix the issue with the "pool recycling" for the agent update.

Avatar

Raygun

John-Daniel Trask

Posted on
Feb 26 2020

"That can fix the issue with the "pool recycling" for the agent update."

Could you elaborate on that?

There's two things in the mix:

  1. The agent
  2. The profiler

The profiler runs in your app itself, which is what requires the recycle event - to reload the application with a newer profiler.

However, the agent itself could be updated when we don't have profiler improvements in a particular release (only agent improvements).

I'm keen to understand though if we've missed something that would make recycling a web app not necessary while also updating the profiler?

--

All of this is to add, absolutely hear you and will discuss about how we could bring this forward. We're about to ship our support for Ruby & Node which has taken significant effort, but certainly will be looking after that at some of these user experience improvements. I personally hate the "out of date agent" banner too :)

I hope that helps,

John-Daniel Trask

Edit: Fixed a sentence to make it clearer