[Feature flag] Clean up `evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions`
Summary
This issue is to rollout the feature on production,
that is currently behind the evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions
feature flag.
Owners
- Team: ~"group::release"
- Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to:
#s_release
- Best individual to reach out to: @shinya.maeda
- PM: @kbychu
Stakeholders
The Rollout Plan
- Partial Rollout on GitLab.com with testing groups
- Rollout on GitLab.com for a certain period (How long)
- Percentage Rollout on GitLab.com
- Rollout Feature for everyone as soon as it's ready
Testing Groups/Projects/Users
-
gitlab-org/gitlab
project -
gitlab-org
/gitlab-com
groups - ...
Expectations
What are we expecting to happen?
Create, update and delete actions for releases start taking into account of protected tags. See https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/releases/#release-permissions for more details.
What might happen if this goes wrong?
See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/335375#summary
In the issue - Fix create/edit/delete release permissions to match tag creation permissions, we're fixing the bugs on release permission model. This is good, however, this also could affect a few projects that rely on the current problematic permission model that their requests will start encountering authorization failure. In order to minimize the actual impact by this change, we'd like to communicate with the project owners on gitlab.com to let them fix their protected tags setting in advance.
What can we monitor to detect problems with this?
See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/335375#monitoring
We've already deployed the monitoring code to measure the potential impact,
- Timeline https://log.gprd.gitlab.net/goto/3b4fa0725009744ee99044a96884bcba
- Affected project ids and user ids who requested https://log.gprd.gitlab.net/goto/9fa4af5c95353841732c46da7f812196
Rollout Steps
Rollout on non-production environments
-
Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments. -
/chatops run auto_deploy status 40b304942d30bcd048377e2717ede057eec65e83
-
-
Enable the feature globally on non-production environments. -
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions true --dev
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions true --staging
-
-
Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.
Preparation before production rollout
-
Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary. -
/chatops run auto_deploy status 40b304942d30bcd048377e2717ede057eec65e83
-
-
Check if the feature flag change needs to be accompanied with a change management issue. Cross link the issue here if it does. -
Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall
Slack alias. -
Ensure that documentation has been updated (More info). => https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/releases/#release-permissions and https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/releases/#troubleshooting -
Announce on the feature issue an estimated time this will be enabled on GitLab.com. -
If the feature flag in code has an actor, enable it on GitLab.com for testing groups/projects. -
/chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions true
-
-
Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.
Global rollout on production
-
Incrementally roll out the feature. - If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions 25 --actors
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions 50 --actors
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions 75 --actors
-
- If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions <rollout-percentage>
-
- Enable the feature globally on production environment.
-
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions true
-
- If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
-
Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled. -
Cross-post chatops slack command to #support_gitlab-com
. (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs) and in your team channel -
Wait for at least one day for the verification term.
(Optional) Release the feature with the feature flag
If you're still unsure whether the feature is deemed stable but want to release it in the current milestone, you can change the default state of the feature flag to be enabled. To do so, follow these steps:
-
Create a merge request with the following changes. Ask for review and merge it. -
Set the default_enabled
attribute in the feature flag definition totrue
. -
Create a changelog entry.
-
-
Ensure that the above MR has been deployed to both production and canary. If the merge request was deployed before the code cutoff, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post. -
/chatops run auto_deploy status 252829ec9802b3e4688ae390ca38f85196b68400
-
-
Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone. -
Set the next milestone to this rollout issue for scheduling the flag removal. -
(Optional) You can create a separate issue for scheduling the steps below to Release the feature. -
Set the title to "[Feature flag] Cleanup evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions
". -
Execute the /copy_metadata <this-rollout-issue-link>
quick action to copy the labels from this rollout issue. -
Link this rollout issue as a related issue. -
Close this rollout issue.
-
WARNING: This approach has the downside that it makes it difficult for us to clean up the flag. For example, on-premise users could disable the feature on their GitLab instance. But when you remove the flag at some point, they suddenly see the feature as enabled and they can't roll it back to the previous behavior. To avoid this potential breaking change, use this approach only for urgent matters.
Release the feature
After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.
-
Create a merge request to remove evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions
feature flag. Ask for review and merge it.-
Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase. -
Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository. -
Create a changelog entry.
-
-
Ensure that the above MR has been deployed to both production and canary. If the merge request was deployed before the code cutoff, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post. -
/chatops run auto_deploy status 2f884c4be8d456f4f664dd8a96e41e8c731c58ae
-
-
Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone. -
Clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production
channel:-
/chatops run feature delete evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions --dev
-
/chatops run feature delete evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions --staging
-
/chatops run feature delete evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions
-
-
Close this rollout issue.
Rollback Steps
-
This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set evalute_protected_tag_for_release_permissions false