OpenSearch Dashboards Version decoupling vision in 2025

[seraphjiang]

In 2024, we successfully achieved the goal of decoupling storage and enabling backward compatibility for OpenSearch Dashboards and plugins. As we begin 2025 and planing for OpenSearch 3.0, we would like to share some thoughts on further version decoupling for OpenSearch Dashboards. Our vision is to empower faster iterations and releases while reducing version dependencies for each plugin release

• plugin forward compatibility at build time
  Over the past two years, OSD has addressed issues related to backward compatibility for both OSD and its plugins. However, challenges with forward compatibility persist. Specifically, OSD plugin versions must match the OSD version exactly. This means that even if a plugin remains unchanged and is in maintenance mode, its version still needs to be updated and rebuilt to comply with the OSD version requirements.

To resolve this issue, we need to develop a version support framework that enables plugins to specify a compatible version range, encompassing both backward and forward compatibility. With such a framework in place, plugins would no longer need to be rebuilt unnecessarily, provided they fall within the supported version range.

What we have done in 2024
#5877
#5804
#6849
#7021

• Release/version decouple from OpenSearch
  Currently, OpenSearch Dashboards and its related plugin releases are tightly coupled with the OpenSearch release. To continue evolving and expanding the scope of OpenSearch Dashboards as a standalone visualization application, similar to Grafana, we aim to decouple the OpenSearch Dashboards release process from the OpenSearch backend release process and cycle. This approach also provides flexibility for non-OpenSearch organizations or vendors to contribute to OpenSearch Dashboards and minimize version currency maintenance efforts in the future.

This effort will need to coordinate with OpenSearch Dashboards and all Dashboards Plugins as well as build and release process and infrastructure of OpenSearch Project.

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