Technology · Ebook

Backstage: Building Developer Portals

by Shriira Press

Backstage is an open platform for building developer portals: a single, unified place for engineers to find services, documentation, and tools — taming the sprawl of microservices and infrastructure. This free book teaches it from the ground up: the developer-experience problem and platform engineering, Backstage's architecture (a framework you build on, with a React frontend and Node.js backend), the Software Catalog (entities, ownership, relationships), Software Templates and golden paths, TechDocs (docs-as-code in the portal), the plugin ecosystem for integrating your tools, building and customizing your portal, adoption and organizational practices, and Backstage's place in the cloud-native ecosystem. Ten focused chapters with clear diagrams that show how to build a developer portal that genuinely improves developer experience at scale.

Contents

1. 1Preface
2. 2Chapter 1 — What Backstage Is
3. 3Chapter 2 — Developer Experience and Platform Engineering
4. 4Chapter 3 — Architecture
5. 5Chapter 4 — The Software Catalog
6. 6Chapter 5 — Software Templates and Golden Paths
7. 7Chapter 6 — TechDocs and Documentation
8. 8Chapter 7 — Plugins and Integrating Tools
9. 9Chapter 8 — Building and Customizing Your Portal
10. 10Chapter 9 — Adoption and Organizational Practices
11. 11Chapter 10 — Backstage in the Ecosystem and in Practice