Skip to content

[Feature flag] Rollout of `cascade_package_forwarding_settings`

Summary

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

Owners

  • Team: ~group::package
  • Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to: #s_package
  • Best individual to reach out to: @sabrams
  • PM: @trizzi

Stakeholders

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

No change in behavior. Package request forwarding continues to work as it already is working.

When is the feature viable?

What might happen if this goes wrong?

We will see an increase in errors (404 or 500) in the Package API, specifically for NPM, PyPI, or Maven packages.

What can we monitor to detect problems with this?

https://log.gprd.gitlab.net/goto/f99a9bd0-45c0-11ed-8d37-e9a2f393ea2a - Watch for an increase in 404 or 500 errors for Maven, PyPI, and npm.

What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?

Continue to monitor https://log.gprd.gitlab.net/goto/f99a9bd0-45c0-11ed-8d37-e9a2f393ea2a for an increase in 404 or 500 errors for Maven, PyPI, and npm.

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 cascade_package_forwarding_settings true --dev --staging --staging-ref
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Note you will need to make sure you are configured to use canary as outlined here when accessing the staging environment in order to make sure you are testing appropriately.

Testing against a project with the feature flag enabled:

npm install @types/jest

added 50 packages, and audited 51 packages in 3s

4 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities

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,gitlab-org/gitlab-foss,gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com cascade_package_forwarding_settings true
  • If you're using group-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-org,gitlab-com cascade_package_forwarding_settings true
  • If you're using user-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • [-] /chatops run feature set --user=<your-username> cascade_package_forwarding_settings true
  • Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Confirmed forwarding still works using the gitlab-org/gitlab project as the configured registry:

npm install @types/jest

added 50 packages, and audited 51 packages in 4s

4 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

found 0 vulnerabilities

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.
  • 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).

  • Incrementally roll out the feature.
    • If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
      • [-] /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings <rollout-percentage> --actors
    • If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 10 --actors
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 25 --actors
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 50 --actors
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 80 --actors
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 100 --actors
    • Enable the feature globally on production environment.
      • /chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings 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 cascade_package_forwarding_settings feature flag: !100456 (merged). 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 included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post.
    • /chatops run release check https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/100456 15.6>
  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.
  • If not already done, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel:
    • /chatops run feature delete cascade_package_forwarding_settings --dev --staging --staging-ref --production
  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set cascade_package_forwarding_settings false
Edited by David Fernandez