publish v8 blog post

Signed-off-by: Taylor Silva <dev@taydev.net>

Author: taylorsilva

docs/blog/posts/2026/01/2026-01-15-v8-release.md

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+---
+title: v8 - New Year, New Concourse Release
+date: 2026-01-15
+authors:
+  - tsilva
+---
+
+[v8.0.0](https://github.com/concourse/concourse/releases/tag/v8.0.0) of
+Concourse is out! I'm going to explain why a new major was needed and flag
+anything that pipeline writers and Concourse operators should keep an eye out
+for.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+## ✨ New Website
+
+First, huge thanks to [kcbimonte](https://github.com/kcbimonte) for doing the
+tedious work of migrating the website off of [booklit](https://booklit.page/)
+and onto MkDocs. We will eventually move it all over to
+[Zensical](https://zensical.org/) once they have all the features we need.
+
+My hope with the new site is that it's easier for users to contribute to the
+docs now. Booklit had its pros, particularly with how internal links were
+handled, but it was definitely a bit of a challenge to extend and change. It
+was also quite a hurdle for new users to understand.
+
+Now, onto the new release!
+
+## Why a New Major Version?
+
+As a project, Concourse avoids making actually breaking changes. For example, a
+pipeline from v4 of Concourse should still continue to work on v8 of Concourse.
+That said, we have made major version bumps over the years, but they're usually
+not for "breaking changes" in the traditional sense.
+
+With Concourse, major version bumps have been motivated by large/long-running
+database migrations. Those were the reasons behind the v5, v6, and v7 major
+bumps. That was also the initial reason for this new major, kicked off by [PR #9165](https://github.com/concourse/concourse/pull/9165).
+
+[#9165](https://github.com/concourse/concourse/pull/9165) changes how Concourse
+stores resource versions, using SHA256 instead of MD5 to create and store
+digests. This helps operators running Concourse in secure environments, where
+algorithms like MD5 are not allowed.
+
+The migration from this PR alone will take a few minutes to run. I recommend
+scaling down your web nodes to one node and then upgrading that single node.
+I've tested running this migration on
+[ci.concourse-ci.org](https://ci.concourse-ci.org) and it took ~5 minutes on a
+Postgresql instance with 4 vCPU and 5GB of RAM. We have `4,358,045` records in
+our `resource_config_versions` table, which is the main table modified in
+the migration. You can run the following query against your Concourse database
+to check how many records your table has:
+
+```sql
+SELECT COUNT(*) FROM resource_config_versions;
+```
+
+This is very much a "behind the scenes" change, as users shouldn't see anything
+different happening with regards to how their pipelines behave. This change
+future-proofs Concourse and enables Concourse to continue running in secure
+environments around the world.
+
+Not wanting to let a good major go to waste, I decided to also tackle a lot of
+outstanding chore issues to improve and refresh Concourse a bit. Let's go over
+all the big changes that landed in v8. Full release notes can be found on
+Github:
+[https://github.com/concourse/concourse/releases/tag/v8.0.0](https://github.com/concourse/concourse/releases/tag/v8.0.0)
+
+## 🛠️ Changing Defaults
+
+
+### 📦 Container Runtime
+
+We've changed the default container runtime to `containerd`! Guardian is still
+a supported runtime but is no longer the default. The main motivation for this
+change was the issues we'd see from users trying to run Guardian on newer
+kernel versions, specifically systems only using cgroups v2. `containerd` has
+proven very stable for us and many users in the community.
+
+### 🔒 Secret Redaction
+
+Secret redaction is now always enabled and its corresponding feature flag has
+no effect. This feature was initially feature flagged to monitor for any
+performance issues. We have seen none over the many years that this feature has
+been available. We consider this feature safe to use in all production environments.
+
+### 🔀 Instance Pipelines and `across` Step
+
+Instance pipelines and `across` steps are now always enabled, and their feature
+flags have no effect. Their "experimental" labels and warnings have also been
+removed. Both features have been available for years now and I see no reason to
+change their current behaviour. Users can consider these features stable.
+
+### ➡️ Inputs for `put` Steps
+
+The default value for `put.inputs` is changed from `all` to `detect`. Streaming
+all volumes into a `put` step has always been overkill and results in long
+initialization times for `put` steps. `detect` works by reviewing all values in
+`put.params` and only mounting volumes with matching names.
+
+This is a breaking change if you have a custom resource type that has
+hard-coded the expected names of volumes into your scripts. I haven't seen any
+resources like this personally, but if they do exist, simply set
+[`put.inputs`](../../../../docs/steps/put.md) to `all` or an array of the
+volumes to mount in your put step.
+
+## ✈️ New Features and Enhancements
+
+It wouldn't be a major release without a couple new features and enhancements.
+
+### 📢 Broadcast Message System
+
+Operators can now broadcast messages to their Concourse cluster and it will
+appear as a banner in the Concourse web UI. Thank you to
+[ceco556](https://github.com/ceco556) for finishing the implementation.
+
+There are three `fly` commands used to manage this system:
+
+* `fly set-wall`
+    * Can only be used by users of the `main` team
+* `fly get-wall`
+    * Can be used by all users
+* `fly clear-wall`
+    * Can only be used by users of the `main` team
+
+!!! tip "Fun Fact!"
+    "Wall" is a reference to the [Unix `wall`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_(Unix)) CLI.
+
+When setting the message with `fly set-wall`, you can include emojis and links.
+Links will be parsed and turned into HTML links that users can click. We made
+sure that no XSS vulnerabilities were introduced.
+
+![](assets/concourse-broadcast-web-ui.png)
+/// caption
+Concourse dashboard showing a broadcast message
+///
+
+### 🏷️ Build URLs for Step Metadata
+
+There are two new handy env vars made available to `get` and `put` steps:
+
+* `BUILD_URL` - Same URL as what you see in the web UI that includes team, pipeline, and job name
+* `BUILD_URL_SHORT` - Shorter URL that uses the build's internal ID instead of the pipeline scoped ID
+
+See [the docs](../../../../docs/resource-types/implementing.md#metadata) for more details.
+
+### 👥 Team Name in `set_pipeline` Steps
+
+Users of the `main` team have been able to set pipelines for other teams for
+quite a while now. In the web UI though, it wasn't obvious that a pipeline was
+being set for another team. The team name is now displayed when setting a
+pipeline for another team.
+
+
+![](assets/concourse-set-pipeline-team-name.png)
+/// caption
+Concourse build logs show `set_pipeline` steps with the team name
+///
+
+### 🚥 Highlighted Group Tabs
+
+To make finding failed builds even easier, especially on large pipelines with
+lots of jobs and groups, group tabs will be highlighted red/orange.
+
+![](assets/concourse-highlight-group-tabs.png)
+/// caption
+Concourse group tabs highlighted red
+///
+
+Thank you to [analytically](https://github.com/analytically) for these last
+three enhancements! He's made many other useful contributions this
+release that you can find in the release notes.
+
+### ▶️ Tasks Can Use `ENTRYPOINT`/`CMD`
+
+If you don't define a `run.path` in your Task's config, Concourse will now
+fall back to running the `ENTRYPOINT`/`CMD` defined in the container image. If
+you define any `run.args` in your Task's config, those will be appended to the
+`ENTRYPOINT`/`CMD` from the container. This is the same behaviour you get with
+`[docker/podman] run` today.
+
+To be clear, Concourse still uses its custom rootfs format behind-the-scenes.
+I assume the majority of users use the
+[registry-image](https://github.com/concourse/registry-image-resource) to pull
+in their images in rootfs format and can therefore leverage this feature. If
+you have some tooling that creates its own rootfs formatted images, you can
+review [this PR](https://github.com/concourse/registry-image-resource/pull/394)
+for how to pass that info along to Concourse.
+
+## 2026 and Support
+
+Thank you to everyone who contributed to this new release. There are already
+more PRs open that will land in v8.1.0 in a few months. Moving forward, I'm
+planning to make new minor releases approximately every quarter. Patches will
+be released for any critical bugs and security fixes as needed. My main focus
+will be on continuing to make Concourse more robust and stable.
+
+I am still looking for more commercial users of Concourse that are interested
+in supporting the project. If your company uses Concourse and is interested in
+seeing the continued development and maintenance of the project, please [reach
+out to me](https://pixelair.io/contact/). You get direct access to me to
+address any Concourse issues you have, as well as training on Concourse
+best practices.
+
+Thank you to all the individuals and the organization
+([SAP💙](https://github.com/SAP)) that support me over on
+[GitHub](https://github.com/sponsors/taylorsilva) as well. They, along with my
+commercial customers, have made this first year of Concourse development
+possible! ✈️

docs/blog/posts/2026/01/assets/concourse-broadcast-web-ui.png

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+{% extends "base.html" %}
+
+{% block announce %}
+<center>
+  🎉 <a href="/blog/2026-01-15-v8---new-year-new-concourse-release/">v8 is released! Read the announcement blog post</a>
+</center>
+{% endblock %}