Feature Flagging System

1 post · Apr 2021

What this trail covers

This post details the initial implementation and benefits of using feature flags at GitHub to reduce deployment risk, enable incremental development of new features, and facilitate various shipping strategies. It covers how feature flags isolate risk, allow for rapid disabling of problematic changes, and support continuous integration by enabling work on features without long-lived branches. The post also touches on testing strategies and the administration of feature flags through a web UI.

All GitHub trails

Apr 2021How we ship code faster and safer with feature flagsThis post introduces the concept and implementation of feature flags at GitHub. It details how feature flags are used to reduce deployment risk by allowing features to be enabled/disabled quickly without full rollbacks. It also explains how feature flags facilitate incremental development of new features by allowing work on small batches and avoiding long-lived feature branches. The post outlines different shipping strategies (individual actors, staff shipping, early access, percentage of actors, dark shipping) and discusses what entities can be flagged (users, organizations, repositories, etc.). Finally, it touches on the runtime costs and technical debt associated with feature flags, including the development of a script to automate the cleanup of dead code and old tests.
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