What's new and changed in v5
This page is a quick reference. For step-by-step upgrade guidance, see the Cells v5 upgrade section.
At a glance¶
| Area | What changed | Action on upgrade |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime | New plugin-based engine driven by a single bootstrap.yaml |
Review your custom bootstrap if any (Kubernetes: re-render via Helm) |
| Reverse proxy | External URL is compulsory behind a reverse proxy — no more implicit derivation | Set External URL on every site before upgrading |
| Primary database | PostgreSQL is now a fully supported primary database | Optional. Plan engine switch as a separate operation post-upgrade |
| Helm / Kubernetes | Bundled subcharts deprecated; cells-controller workload added; OpenShift template available | Externalize backends; allow controller RBAC for ConfigMaps/Secrets |
| Datasources | GCS removed; structured datasources hidden behind an advanced flag | Migrate GCS-backed datasources to S3 (or equivalent) before upgrading |
| Migrations | New v4 → v5 migration framework (SQL, PaT, policies, namespaces, metadata) | Runs automatically on first startup |
| Auth tokens | Hydra JWKs regenerated; existing tokens invalidated | Users log out; regenerate PATs used by scripts/clients |
| Metadata | New Entity Values store, redesigned info-panel UX | Migrated automatically |
| Pages | New Pages display with default namespaces installed on first run | Nothing to do — new namespaces are created at first start |
| Observability | End-to-end OpenTelemetry (traces, logs, metrics) over OTLP | Optional. Configure OTLP endpoint via bootstrap.yaml |
| Legacy config | Legacy config migrations deprecated | Upgrade goes through the v5 framework — do not chain old ones |
New features¶
- Cloud-native clustering, fully rewritten — stateless pods, externalized config/registry, replica-aware connectors,
cells-controllerworkload. - Multi-tenancy — tenants isolated across config/data/identity, configurable tenant header.
- PostgreSQL as a first-class primary database (PG 13+).
- Routing flexibility — Caddy and the Sites configuration are decoupled from the main HTTP server mux.
- New brokers / queues — NATS JetStream, gRPC PubSub, file-system PubSub broker, debounce and goqueue.
- Vault-backed secrets and etcd-backed registry.
- Pages display — modernized authoring experience, editor with Table-of-Contents hints.
- Custom Metadata Entity Values — togglable fields, focus-based editing, popover tagging, info-panel validation flows, pre-filled schema defaults.
- Debounced search on text-based fields, refreshed i18n (DE, FR, NO, PT-BR, JA, UK).
- Enterprise: LLM/OpenAI integration, scheduler syncer
dryRunmode, refined policy/ACL semantics, additional S3 signature mode.
Breaking changes & deprecation¶
- Reverse URL compulsory behind a reverse proxy — implicit detection from request headers removed.
- Bundled Helm subcharts deprecated — production deployments must use external services.
- GCS datasources removed.
- Structured datasources are now hidden behind an advanced configuration flag.
- Legacy config migrations deprecated — go through the v5 migration framework.
- Misc API changes: editor URL keys exposed on REST endpoints, presigned-URL flag on
/versions, expanded CheckFileInfo response in the WOPI/Collabora integration.