[Feature flag] Rollout of `restrict_special_characters_in_project_path`

Summary

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

!80055 (merged) will restrict the usage of consecutive special characters and special characters at the start and end of the project path.

The validation only runs when the project path is created or updated.

Owners

• Team: Manage:Workspace
• Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to: #g_manage_workspace
• Best individual to reach out to: @abdwdd
• PM: @ogolowinski

Stakeholders

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

The active record validation in the linked MR only runs when a new project is added or the path of an existing project is changed. We will see some 400 errors because of this validation, but there might be 5xx errors if something goes wrong.

What might happen if this goes wrong?

If there's any place where we are creating projects in an automated fashion with paths violating the added validation then we will see some 5xx errors. If there are any 5xx errors related to this change on Sentry, we just need to turn off the feature flag. See the Rollback Steps section below for the command.

What can we monitor to detect problems with this?

Rails Error Rates (accumulated by components) gives accumulated error rates so Sentry and Kibana will be better for monitoring.

What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?

• Sentry dashboard link - for any 5xx errors
• 400 errors on Kibana
• Validation errors on Kibana

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 restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true --dev
  • /chatops run feature set restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true --staging
• Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Specific rollout on production

• Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary.
  • /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
• If you're using project-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
  • /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true
  • /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab-foss restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true
  • /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true
• Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

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_manage_workspace).

• Incrementally roll out the feature.
  • If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
    • /chatops run feature set restrict_special_characters_in_project_path <rollout-percentage> --actors
  • If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
    • /chatops run feature set restrict_special_characters_in_project_path <rollout-percentage>
  • Enable the feature globally on production environment.
    • /chatops run feature set restrict_special_characters_in_project_path true
• Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled.
• Wait for at least one day for the verification term.

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.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

• Create a merge request to remove restrict_special_characters_in_project_path 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 restrict_special_characters_in_project_path --dev
  • /chatops run feature delete restrict_special_characters_in_project_path --staging
  • /chatops run feature delete restrict_special_characters_in_project_path
• Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

• This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:

/chatops run feature set restrict_special_characters_in_project_path false