Backstage 1.55 adds task recovery and raises the search backend bar

The update helps stalled scaffolder jobs continue where they left off, but it also pushes search users onto Elasticsearch 8.19 or later.

Backstage 1.55 brings automatic recovery for crashed or timed-out scaffolder tasks, but it also introduces several upgrade hurdles for platform teams, including removed catalog APIs and an Elasticsearch 8 migration for search. The new scaffolder.taskRecovery setting resumes from the last finished step, preserves secrets until completion, and keeps step outputs for later steps, while the release warns that recovered actions should be idempotent. The release drops deprecated catalog processors and compatibility options, tightens TechDocs plugin handling, and raises the Elasticsearch requirement to 8.19 or later for the search module. It also adds a credentials requirement for some SCM actions, makes dry-run permissions explicit, and includes performance work that cuts some GitLab action calls from about 300 to under ten and reduces one merge-request step from 5–15 seconds to about 3 seconds. Since then, three patch releases have landed, with 1.55.1, 1.55.2 and 1.55.3 fixing CLI, TechDocs and Markdown-extension issues, and 1.56.0-next.2 is already out as a pre-release.