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Feature Flag rollout: `ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_var`

Summary

This issue is to rollout the feature on production, that is currently behind the ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_var feature flag.

Owners

  • Team: grouppipeline authoring
  • Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to: #g_pipeline_authoring
  • Best individual to reach out to: @lauraX (backend) or @f_caplette (frontend)

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

We are expecting users to be able to use special characters when masking variables.

Rollout Steps

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Verify the MR with the feature flag is merged to master.
  • 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 ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_var true --dev --staging --staging-ref
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Set a milestone to the rollout issue to signal for enabling and removing the feature flag when it is stable.
  • [-] 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).
  • Leave a comment on the feature issue announcing estimated time when this feature flag will be enabled on GitLab.com.
  • [-] Ensure that any breaking changes have been announced following the release post process to ensure GitLab customers are aware.
  • 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).

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 ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_va 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 release check <merge-request-url> <milestone>
  • 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 ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_var --dev --staging --staging-ref --production

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set ci_remove_character_limitation_raw_masked_var false
Edited by Laura Montemayor