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Deprecation notice - Disable expansion of file type variables in .gitlab-ci.yml

Darren Eastman requested to merge deprecation-notice-file-variable-expansion-file-content into master

/label release post release post item Technical Writing ~devops:: ~group:: release post itemdeprecation /label typemaintenance /milestone % /assign @EM/PM (choose the DRI; remove backticks here, and below)

Be sure to link this MR to the relevant deprecation issue(s).

If there is no relevant deprecation issue, hit pause and:

Deprecation announcements can and should be created and merged into Docs at any time, to optimize user awareness and planning. We encourage confirmed deprecations to be merged as soon as the required reviews are complete, even if weeks ahead of the target milestone's release post. For the announcement to be included in a specific release post and that release's documentation packages, this MR must be reviewed/merged per the due dates below:

By the 10th: Assign this MR to these team members as Reviewer and for Approval (optional unless noted as required):

  • Product Marketing: @PMM
  • Product Designer(s): @ProductDesigners
  • Product Group Manager or Director: @PM - Required
  • Engineering Manager: @EM - Required
  • Technical writer: @TW - Required

By 11:59 AM PDT 15th: EM/PM assigns this MR to the TW reviewer for final review and merge: @EM/PM

By 11:59 PM PDT 17th: TW Reviewer updates Docs by merging this MR to master: @TW

Please review:

They are frequently updated, and everyone should make sure they are aware of the current standards (PM, PMM, EM, and TW).

EM/PM release post item checklist

  • Set yourself as the Assignee, meaning you are the DRI.
  • If the deprecation is a breaking change, add label breaking change.
  • Follow the process to create a deprecation YAML file.
  • Add reviewers by the 10th.
  • When ready to be merged and not later than the 15th, add the ~ready label and @ message the TW for final review and merge.

Reviewers

When the content is ready for review, it must be reviewed by a Technical Writer and Engineering Manager, but can also be reviewed by Product Marketing, Product Design, and the Product Leaders for this area. Please use the Reviewers for Merge Requests feature for all reviews. Reviewers will then approve the MR and remove themselves from Reviewers when their review is complete.

Tech writer review

After being added as a Reviewer to this merge request, the TW performs their review according to the criteria described below.

Review deprecation MRs with a similar process as regular docs MRs. Add suggestions as needed, @ message the PM to inform them the first review is complete, and remove yourself as a reviewer if it's not ready for merge yet.

Expand for Details
  • Title:
    • Length limit: 7 words (not including articles or prepositions).
    • Capitalization: ensure the title is sentence cased.
    • Rewrite to exclude the words deprecation, deprecate, removal, and remove if necessary.
  • Consistency:
    • Ensure that all resources (docs, deprecation, etc.) refer to the feature with the same term / feature name.
  • Content:
    • Make sure the deprecation is accurate based on your understanding. Look for typos or grammar mistakes. Work with PM and PMM to ensure a consistent GitLab style and tone for messaging, based on other features and deprecations.
    • Review use of whitespace and bullet lists. Will the deprecation item be easily scannable when published? Consider adding line breaks or breaking content into bullets if you have more than a few sentences.
    • Make sure there aren't acronyms readers may not understand per https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#writing-style-guidelines.
  • Links:
    • All links must be full URLs, as the deprecation YAML files are used in two different projects. Do not use relative links. The generated doc is an exception to the relative link rule and currently uses absolute links only.
    • Make sure all links and anchors are correct. Do not link to the H1 (top) anchor on a docs page.
  • Code. Make sure any included code is wrapped in code blocks.
  • Capitalization. Make sure to capitalize feature names. Stay consistent with the Documentation Style Guidance on Capitalization.
  • Blank spaces. Remove unnecessary spaces (end of line spaces, double spaces, extra blank lines, and lines with only spaces).

When the PM indicates it is ready for merge and all issues have been addressed, start the merge process.

Technical writer merge process

The deprecations doc's .md file must be updated before this MR is merged:

  1. Check out the MR's branch (in the gitlab-org/gitlab project).
  2. From the command line (in the branch), run bin/rake gitlab:docs:compile_deprecations. If you want to double check that it worked, you can run bin/rake gitlab:docs:check_deprecations to verify that the doc is up to date.
  3. Commit the updated file and push the changes.
  4. Set the MR to merge when the pipeline succeeds (or merge if the pipeline is already complete).

If you have trouble running the Rake task, check the troubleshooting steps.

Breaking change impact assessment

  • * Are there existing users depending on this feature?
    • Are self-managed customers affected?
      • Yes - it is reasonable to assume that there are self-managed customers that use file-type variables and have developed scripts that "have adopted the current broken behavior for use in their pipelines." We don't know the impact of this in terms of how many customers, pipelines etc. Related comment
    • To verify and quantify usage, use Grafana or Kibana. If you're not sure about how to query the data, contact the infrastructure team on their Slack channel, #infrastructure-lounge
      • MR open to add logging to GitLab SaaS so that we can get a sense of the volume of impacted users/customers.
  • * Was sufficient time given to communicate the change?
    • Uncertain at this time as we don't yet have any data regarding the projected number of users/customers on GitLab SaaS or Self-Managed that have pipelines with jobs based on the incorrect behavior.
  • Changes in the permissions, the API schema, and the API response might affect existing 3rd party integrations.
    • Reach out to the Support team or Technical Account Managers and ask about the possible impact of this change
Edited by Darren Eastman

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