The v4 roadmap was outlined more than a year ago, in that time all the major features planned have been completed and released in backwards compatible ways into v3, leaving only the breaking changes left (the fun stuff).
We're now also at a point where the breaking changes that we want to include in v4 have been completed on a branch, and a migration guide is ready to use which describes how to prepare for v4. Therefore, it seems to me, that we're ready to actually prepare the release.
The new plugin APIs are ready to use, are being used, and here's a video of them in action.
The full API docs can be found at pkg.go.dev/github.com/Jeffail/benthos/v3/public, and there's an example repository demonstrating a few different component plugin types at github.com/benthosdev/benthos-plugin-example.
I need help, attention and affirmation, and therefore it's time for a development update. Around five months ago I posted a roadmap for Benthos v4 that included some utterly unattainable goals that only a super human could achieve.
Now that most of those features are ready to test, namely a new plugins API and config templating, I'm looking for people to try them out and give feedback. Please read on if that sounds like fun to you, or also if it doesn't sound fun but you intend to do it anyway.
Benthos has been at major version 3 for over a year now, and I consider it to be a pretty cool achievement that given all the dope features added we've managed to keep both the Benthos config spec and APIs fully backwards compatible.
However, eventually it would be nice to cut a new major release and prune all of the dead weight that has accumulated during this time. Since major version releases don't come often I wanted to be sure that we've considered and planned any other potential breaking changes that could be bundled along with it.
