[DEPR]: newrelic as baseline dependency in Django IDAs

[timmc-edx]

RFC Start Date

2025-05-05

Target Plan Accepted Date

2025-05-19

Target Transition Unblocked Date

Already unblocked.

Earliest Breaking Changes Unblocked Date

Actual plan-accepted date (2025-05-19)

Earliest Open edX Named Release with Breaking Changes

Ulmo - 2025-10

Rationale

edx.org used New Relic for many years, but we have since expanded the options in https://github.com/openedx/edx-django-utils to cover several telemetry backends (Datadog, OpenTelemetry). The new backends are optional and are not included by default, but the newrelic Python package is still specified in the base.in and production.in files of edx-django-utils and a number of IDAs.

To reduce unneeded dependencies, we should remove this package from the base requirements.

This DEPR does not remove any New Relic functionality, just the inclusion of the package as a baseline.

Removal

The newrelic line would be removed from base.in and production.in files.

It would not be removed from test dependencies, e.g. in edx-django-utils's test.in or edx-repo-health's sample repo.

Replacement

Deployers who need New Relic functionality will need to install newrelic separately, e.g. using *_EXTRA_PIP_REQUIREMENTS settings (available now in Tutor) or as a Tutor patch (which could be developed -- see comments).

Deprecation

No response

Migration

No response

Additional Info

No response

Task List

Goal is to remove from base/production/etc. .in requirements files, as seen in this search: NOT is:archived org:openedx /^newrelic/ path:requirements/**.in NOT path:**/test.in NOT path:tests/**

• feat!: Remove newrelic from base dependencies edx-django-utils#504
  • This takes care of the removal of newrelic from most services (via the normal dependency upgrade process)
  • Published as version 8.0.0 -- should upgrade to this when removing newrelic from base deps in following services.
• feat: Remove newrelic package from base dependencies credentials#2780
• feat: Remove newrelic direct references and dependency course-discovery#4633
• Add to Ulmo release notes
• Skipped: https://github.com/openedx/xqueue/blob/3973a5f2a0d0ce789e762ee43e3dd224af291b36/requirements/base.in#L13
  • There are nontrivial direct newrelic references in the code: https://github.com/search?type=code&q=repo%3Aopenedx%2Fxqueue+newrelic+language%3APython&l=Python
  • Will skip this repo since xqueue is itself undergoing replacement.
• PR opened: feat: Remove newrelic dependency xqueue-watcher#119
  • PR may or may not be merged as this repo is marked as not accepting contributions or bug fixes. Not waiting for this to resolve before closing the DEPR.
  • There's also a newrelic reference in the Dockerfile, but... can ignore this for now.

[timmc-edx]

Communicated: https://discuss.openedx.org/t/deprecation-removal-newrelic-as-base-dependency-public-engineering-360/15726

[regisb]

I'm very much looking forward to this change. Just one question:

This DEPR does not remove any New Relic functionality, just the inclusion of the package as a baseline.

Searching the repositories you listed, there are some bits and pieces of newrelic in a few places:

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenedx%2Fcourse-discovery%20newrelic&type=code
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenedx%2Fxqueue%20newrelic&type=code
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenedx%2Fxqueue-watcher%20newrelic&type=code

Are you saying we should leave this code as-is? My understanding is that these IDAs should migrate from the newrelic to the edx-django-utils API. And thus that some production and test code should be modified. Does this match what you had in mind?

[timmc-edx]

In my search, I only found conditional imports of newrelic, which should not be broken by removing it as a dependency -- so my original plan was to just modify the dependencies for now, and come back later to fix the code references to use the edx-django-utils APIs.

But looking now, the total number of references in Python code is pretty small, so I should be able to take care of those in the same PRs:

https://github.com/search?type=code&q=NOT+is%3Aarchived+org%3Aopenedx+newrelic+language%3APython+NOT+repo%3Aopenedx%2Fedx-django-utils

(The only one I see that's non-trivial is xqueue. That one I expect I would just remove the dependency and file an issue for conversion to calling edx-django-utils, since it might require an API expansion in the latter.)

[ormsbee]

XQueue is actively being removed entirely, so I wouldn't worry about that particular repo.