Announcing the Deprecation of Built-In Gadgets

Hi Inspektors, with the release of v0.37.0, we are announcing the deprecation of built-in gadgets, which will be removed from Inspektor Gadget in six months. We have made significant progress in making Inspektor Gadget a modular framework that allows users to easily collect Linux kernel data using eBPF. Image-based gadgets, a key component of this framework, should be used moving forward and will replace built-in gadgets.

While built-in gadgets were great for the initial scope of the project, when Inspektor Gadget was exclusively an interactive debugging tool, the project has evolved to become a general data collection tool. This evolution created a need for a more extensible version of gadgets that aren’t embedded into the core binary. Image-based gadgets were created as a response to these requirements and have become a fundamental building block of the Inspektor Gadget framework.

We are deprecating built-in gadgets to lighten up the Inspektor Gadget and to focus our efforts exclusively on image-based gadgets to continue to make Inspektor Gadget the best project it can be. If you are using built-in gadgets, please migrate to image-based gadgets as soon as possible. Documentation for migrating to image-based gadgets can be found here. Image-based gadgets provide the same, and in some cases, improved functionality over built-in gadgets but may require some adjustments to your system, and we are here to support you. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us on Slack if you need any assistance.