Feature toggle cog control of `dev.gitlab.org`
Currently, we're able to control staging.gitlab.com
and gitlab.com
feature toggles through Cog using
!feature-set <feature-name> <percentage>
However, we cannot control feature toggles on dev.gitlab.org
. This creates a bottleneck in our testing process:
- For our initial testing, we need to find someone with shell access to enable the flag
- This leads to delays in testing, particularly when engineers are on leave.
- When something goes wrong, we also need to find an engineer with shell access to disable the flag.
- Unlike Staging and Production, where the person monitoring the feature also has the ability to turn it off, in the development environment, if it becomes evident that the feature needs to be disabled, the engineer then has to find someone with shell access. This can take time.
- Over the weekend, a bad nightly release went out, causing a feature to stop functioning. This could have easily been solved as the engineer responsible for the feature was aware of the problem but they were unable to find someone with appropriate access to disable it.
- Ironically, if the same problem had happened in staging or production, the engineer would have quickly been able to disable the feature, but not in our development environment.
I'm aware that Cog is being deprecated. However, since we don't have any dates for it's replacement being ready, and this is a drag-anchor on productivity I thought it worthy of discussion.
Would cog feature-toggle commands against dev.gitlab.org
be something we would be able/willing to do without too much effort?
cc @sitschner
Edited by Andrew Newdigate