Commit 33b02465 authored by Shinya Maeda's avatar Shinya Maeda

Documentation for Multi-Env feature flags

Also, add shared section about Environment scopes

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parent 43691efe
......@@ -598,6 +598,31 @@ fetch line:
fetch = +refs/environments/*:refs/remotes/origin/environments/*
```
## Environment specs (scopes) **[PREMIUM]**
Some of EEP features can define a different behavior for each [Environments](#introduction-to-environments-and-deployments),
for instance, [you can create a secret variable to be injected to production environment only](variables/README.md#limiting-environment-scopes-of-variables-premium).
In most cases, these features use the _environment specs_ mechanism, which offers
an efficient way to talk about scoping each environment group.
Let's say there are three environments: `production`, `staging`, `review/feature-1` and `review/feature-2`.
Each environment can be matched with the following environment spec.
| Environment Spec | `production` | `staging` | `review/feature-1` | `review/feature-2` |
| ---------------- | ---------- | ------- | ---------------- | ---------------- |
| * | Matched | Matched | Matched | Matched |
| production | Matched | | | |
| staging | | Matched | | |
| review/* | | | Matched | Matched |
| review/feature-1 | | | Matched | |
As you can see, you can use specific matching for selecting a particular environment,
also use wildcard matching (`*`) for selecting a particular environment group,
such as [Review apps](review_apps/index.md) (`review/*`).
Please note that the most _specific_ spec takes precedence over the other wildcard matching.
In this case, `review/feature-1` spec takes precedence over `review/*` and `*` specs.
## Limitations
1. You are limited to use only the [CI predefined variables][variables] in the
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......@@ -265,6 +265,8 @@ Wildcards (`*`) can be used along with the environment name, therefore if the
environment scope is `review/*` then any jobs with environment names starting
with `review/` would have that particular variable.
Read more about [Environment scopes](../environments.md#environment-specs-scopes-premium)
### Manually-specified variables
> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/44059) in GitLab 10.8.
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......@@ -46,17 +46,41 @@ To add a new feature flag:
or an underscore (`_`).
1. Give it a description (optional, 255 characters max).
1. If you want to activate it, click on the "Active" checkbox.
1. Define environment [specs](#define-environment-specs). If you want the flag on by default, enable the catch-all [wildcard spec (`*`)](#define-environment-specs)
1. Click **Create feature flag**.
Once a feature flag is created, the list of existing feature flags will be presented
with ability to edit or remove them.
To make a feature flag active or inactive, click the pencil icon to edit it,
and toggle the "Active" checkbox.
and toggle the status for each scope.
![Feature flags list](img/feature_flags_list.png)
## Define environment specs
> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/8621) in GitLab 11.8.
In general, an application is deployed to multiple environments, such as
production, staging and [review apps](../../../ci/review_apps/index.md).
You may not want to enable a feature flag on production until QA team has
confirmed that the feature is working correctly on the other testing environments.
To define statuses for each environment:
1. Navigate to your project's **Operations > Feature Flags**.
1. Click on the **New Feature Flag** button or edit an existing flag.
1. Set the status of the default [spec](../../../ci/environments.md#environment-specs-scopes-premium) (`*`). This status will be used for _all_ environments.
1. If you want to enable/disable the feature on a specific environment, create a new [spec](../../../ci/environments.md#environment-specs-scopes-premium) and type the environment name.
1. Set the status of the additional spec. This status takes precedence over the default spec's status since we always use the most specific match available.
1. Click **Create feature flag** or **Update feature flag**.
![Feature flag specs list](img/specs_list.png)
NOTE: **NOTE**
We'd highly recommend you to use the [Environment](../../../ci/environments.md)
feature as well in order to quickly skim which flag is enabled on per environment.
## Integrating with your application
In order to use Feature Flags, you need to first
......@@ -71,9 +95,10 @@ To get the access credentials that your application will need to talk to GitLab:
1. Click on the **Configure** button to see the values:
- **API URL**: URL where the client (application) connects to get a list of feature flags.
- **Instance ID**: Unique token that authorizes the retrieval of the feature flags.
- **Application name**: The name of the running environment. By default this is
set to `production`, but you can use whatever you want in your application
(e.g.,`staging`, `review/feature`).
- **Application name**: The name of the running environment. For instance,
if the application runs for production server, application name would be
`production` or such. This value is used for
[the environment spec evaluation](#define-environment-specs).
NOTE: **Note:**
The meaning of these fields might change over time. For example, we are not sure
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