Add ability to associate feature flag with contextual Merge Request
Problem to solve
Our feature flag list interface is nice, but it may be unclear what a feature flag was just by reading the name. Typically this will be an operations person coming in and looking for a feature flag and wanting to understand what they are looking at.
From the MR side, we can make it clear what the status of the associated feature flag is for that feature.
The combination of these two would make it easy to understand what feature flags are for and what the status of an MR is as it relates to feature flags.
Intended users
- Sidney, Systems Administrator, https://design.gitlab.com/research/personas#persona-sidney
- Product Manager (or others who are setting or need to know the state of feature flags)
Further details
Following issue #26456 (comment 227107938) we want to extend the context of features flags to merge requests as well
Future phases: Once we connect between the feature flag and the associated MR we can further enhance the transparency by adding the environment on which the feature flag is enabled and later on the % rollout. After that we can enable the user to click on the feature flag from the issue to change its settings and vice versa, the environment will list the associated flags within it (already exists) and a list of the related issues that can be clickable as well.
Proposal
Allow users to be able to map a given feature flag to a change that introduced it. This could be linked to from various places where we show the feature flag (issue, mr, epic), adding important context.
Associate a feature flag on MR by mentioning
- Feature flags can be mentioned/linked in the description and comments to add relationship
- Mentions can be made using the
^
symbol - Mentions can be made using a link to the feature flag
- References across projects can be made with links and should be displayed with shortened links(ie gitlab-ce^89012)
- When editing description/comment entering
^
should bring up an autocomplete list with available feature flags.
Feature Flag Detail screen
Merge Request screen
- Add text and link to related feature flag
- Feature flags can be mentioned/linked in the description and comments to add relationship
- If there are no related feature flags, do not show text
Add section for related merge requests.
- Merge request can only be added by mentioning/linking in the feature flag description
- If there are no related merge request, do not show the component
Permissions and Security
Documentation
Testing
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
Amount of clicks from issue to feature flag and vice vera
What is the type of buyer?
Links / references
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