RuntimeEnabledFeatures flags that we might be able to remove

679 views
Skip to first unread message

David Baron

unread,
Jan 12, 2024, 11:39:45 AM1/12/24
to blink-dev
Since we've recently been more careful about creating feature flags for changes that have the possibility of breaking content, we've also been creating more feature flags than before.  This means that we're also creating a larger number of feature flags that have shipped to stable, been shown to be safe, and have served their purpose.  Many of these flags (and associated flag-controlled code) can hopefully be removed.

I made a spreadsheet of feature flags that have been shipped in stable along with the stable milestone they shipped in.  The sheet should be publicly viewable and editable by any Chromium committer.  The sheet itself has notes about how I made it (briefly: mostly with third_party/blink/tools/list_stable_features.py).

This sheet is presented as data to help folks remember to remove flags that they were intending to remove.  I'm sure there are a bunch of flags listed that shouldn't be removed, but also plenty that can be removed (either now or soon).

Feel free to add notes to the sheet, update owners as needed, and to write CLs to remove flags that we don't need anymore.

-David

Xianzhu Wang

unread,
Jan 12, 2024, 1:34:22 PM1/12/24
to David Baron, blink-dev
It seems that some old public features can also be removed. They have dedicated --disable-* command line switches or are bound to base features, but are not much different from the non-public ones which are also controllable with command line flags (--disable-features/--disable-blink-features) or through automatically defined base features. They are public perhaps just because they had existed before we added new ways to control blink runtime features, such as WebRuntimeFeatures::EnableFeatureFromString (instead of dedicated functions) and automatically defined base features.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blink-dev+...@chromium.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAG0MU3ia7vybzAWOADVmqdLhN%2BT7VJsfNcmaLcXAutwZRSpVTQ%40mail.gmail.com.

David Baron

unread,
Mar 21, 2024, 8:51:31 PM3/21/24
to blink-dev
I've updated the spreadsheet of stable feature flags to include features that shipped to stable in M121 and M122, and to remove flags that have been removed since my last update.  (I left the previous version of the sheet in the second tab.)  As before, hopefully this will prompt some removal of flags that we don't need any longer.

-David

David Baron

unread,
Aug 23, 2024, 12:19:23 PM8/23/24
to blink-dev
I have again updated the spreadsheet of stable feature flags with a new tab that includes features that shipped to stable in M123 through M127, and to remove flags that have been removed since my last update.

As before, please have a look to see if there are feature flags that you can remove because they're no longer needed.

-David

David Baron

unread,
Nov 22, 2024, 10:47:42 AM11/22/24
to blink-dev
I have updated the spreadsheet of stable feature flags with another tab that includes features that shipped to stable in M128 through M131 and removes flags that have been removed since my last update.  (Note that M131 shipped very recently so many of the flags might not be ready to remove quite yet; I gave the text for the M131 features less contrast as a reminder of this.)

As before, please have a look to see if there are feature flags that you can remove because they're no longer needed.

-David

David Baron

unread,
Jun 25, 2025, 5:19:24 PMJun 25
to blink-dev
I have again updated the spreadsheet of stable feature flags with a new tab.  I've updated the old data, and I've added features that shipped to stable in M132 through M137.

As before, please take a look to see if there are feature flags you can remove because they're no longer needed.

-David
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages