[Fleet] Evaluate impact of moving to package semver instead of release tag in labeling

[juliaElastic]

Evaluate impact of Add support for pre-release semver in packages package-spec#225 on kibana/fleet.

Changes:

• release label in packages is deprecated (still populated for BWC)
• semantic versioning is used to determine if package is stable/prerelease
• no change in registries for now (snapshot, staging, production)

Required changes on Fleet side: #122973

• Change experimental=true to prerelease=true in registry API calls
• Update UI labeling to be based on semver instead of release label of packages
• Potentially introduce UI toggle to show/hide prerelease packages

Open questions:

What is the impact on older versions of Kibana?
What is the business impact? (Keep as tech debt vs fixing)
What is the migration path from deprecation of release field -> removal?
Impact on Beta/Experimental/etc labeling in Integrations UI and switching between Beats/Elastic Agent view.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/fleet (Team:Fleet)

[juliaElastic]

Findings:

1. What is the impact on older versions of Kibana?

• Should have no impact, release tag is populated by registry API for BWC (only ga and beta)
• Impact could be when snapshot/staging and production registries are merged [Change Proposal] Remove release tag from packages package-spec#225 (comment)

2. What is the business impact? (Keep as tech debt vs fixing)

• Experimental/prerelease flag in registry API call: tech debt, since we have to rename experimental to prerelease with no change in functionality (experimental flag is deprecated)

• UI badges based on semver: needs fixing [Fleet] Add option to toggle search of prerelease packages #122973 (comment)

• Registry populates release tag for BWC, only ga/beta https://github.com/elastic/package-registry/blob/2265fb37a31aad1bbc7201f10af683d46ec8f5f8/packages/releases.go#L17-L39

• Replace current beta/experimental labels with the following mappings:

  • 0.x versions -> "Technical Preview"
  • x.x.x-beta... -> "Beta"
  • x.x.x-rc... -> "Release Candidate"
  • x.x.x-preview... -> "Technical Preview"
  • Other prerelease labels won't be allowed in the spec, but if they appear, default to "Beta".

• Update mapToCard logic:

  kibana/x-pack/plugins/fleet/public/applications/integrations/sections/epm/screens/home/index.tsx

  Lines 69 to 74 in 6693ef3

  	let release: 'ga' | 'beta' | 'experimental' | undefined;
  	if ('release' in item) {
  	release = item.release;
  	} else if (item.isBeta === true) {
  	release = 'beta';
  	}

3. What is the migration path from deprecation of release field -> removal?

• Not going to be removed for long (if ever), registry api has fallback logic to map semver to ga/beta [Change Proposal] Remove release tag from packages package-spec#225 (comment)

4. Impact on Beta/Experimental/etc labeling in Integrations UI and switching between Beats/Elastic Agent view.

• Needs fixing: UI badges to derive from semver (see above)
• Beats/Elastic Agent toggle
  • use new semver mapping instead of release tag in the logic where finding replacements for epr package: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/main/x-pack/plugins/fleet/public/applications/integrations/hooks/use_merge_epr_with_replacements.ts#L14-L22

5. Risk of kibana auto/manual upgrade to prerelease packages
It can happen today also if there is a prerelease package published to prod registry.
Kibana UI auto upgrades to latest package version for some packages e.g. apm-8.2.0-dev3
Kibana UI shows upgrade button if there is a newer package available (even if that package is non GA)
Ideas to improve the situation:

• Do not auto upgrade to prerelease
• Confirmation window for manual upgrade
• UI Toggle to hide prerelease packages

Note: currently Registry.findLatestPackage includes experimental=true flag always, this should be toggled as well when the UI toggle is implemented:

kibana/x-pack/plugins/fleet/server/services/epm/registry/index.ts

Lines 73 to 80 in 4089696

	async function _fetchFindLatestPackage(
	packageName: string,
	options?: FetchFindLatestPackageOptions
	) {
	const { ignoreConstraints = false } = options ?? {};
	const registryUrl = getRegistryUrl();
	const url = new URL(`${registryUrl}/search?package=${packageName}&experimental=true`);

[juliaElastic]

Shared findings with fleet-team on the engineering sync on March 22. Updated with suggested change in Beats/Elastic Agent toggle.