[Feature flag] Rollout of `packages_installable_package_files`
Summary
This issue is to rollout the package file status column which is part of the requirements for the background job handling cleanup policies for packages on production.
The status column is a wide change that can affect pretty much all manager APIs, rest APIs and GraphQL handling package files. This change can easily introduce ~performance issues such as n+1
situations. The feature flag allow us to rollout this change incrementally and provides a safety toggle that can be switched off in case of impactful issues.
Owners
- Team: Package
- Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to:
#s_package
- Best individual to reach out to: @10io , @hortiz5 or
#s_package
- PM: @trizzi
- EM: @michelletorres
Stakeholders
n / a
Expectations
What are we expecting to happen?
No user facing changes.
When is the feature viable?
When the feature flag reaches 100%
What might happen if this goes wrong?
- Package files are not properly returned by Manager APIs, Rest APIs or GraphQL APIs.
- Manager APIs, Rest APIs or GraphQL APIs see a massive slowdown.
What can we monitor to detect problems with this?
- https://dashboards.gitlab.net/d/stage-groups-package/stage-groups-group-dashboard-package-package?orgId=1 (excluding dashboards for container registry objects endpoints)
What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?
- https://dashboards.gitlab.net/d/stage-groups-package/stage-groups-group-dashboard-package-package?orgId=1 with usual charts
Rollout Steps
Rollout on non-production environments
- Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments.
-
/chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
-
-
Enable the feature globally on non-production environments. -
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files true --dev
-
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files true --staging
-
-
Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.
Specific rollout on production
n / a as this is a feature flag on a global scope (not actor scoped)
Preparation before global rollout
- [-] 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). -
Announce on the feature issue an estimated time this will be enabled on GitLab.com. -
Notify #support_gitlab-com
and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).
Global rollout on production
For visibility, all /chatops
commands that target production should be executed in the #production
slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_TEAM_NAME
).
-
Incrementally roll out the feature. -
Incrementally roll out the feature. - If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
-
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files 20
-
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files 50
-
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files 70
-
- Enable the feature globally on production environment.
-
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files true
-
-
-
Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled. -
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 default-enabling 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 <merge-commit-of-default-enabling-mr>
-
-
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 packages_installable_package_files
". -
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 packages_installable_package_files
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 cleanup 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 <merge-commit-of-cleanup-mr>
-
-
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 packages_installable_package_files --dev
-
/chatops run feature delete packages_installable_package_files --staging
-
/chatops run feature delete packages_installable_package_files
-
-
Close this rollout issue.
Rollback Steps
-
This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set packages_installable_package_files false