OEP for review: Feature Toggle Best Practices

[Nimisha Asthagiri]

Hello edx-code,

Feature Toggle Best Practices

We use feature toggles extensively in our system to selectively enable a feature for certain users or certain deployments and more generally to decouple deployment of code from release (enablement) of the code. When used with care, feature toggles can be a powerful tool that enable many use cases.

However, feature toggles inherently add complexity to the code since they introduce multiple paths and configuration operations. Let's align on a common best practice for feature toggling as it is critical for both the short-term and long-term health of the open edX system.

Please refer to the PR for feature toggle best practices.

Review Feedback

You may share your comments/feedback by (in order of preference):

• posting on the PR.
• starting a thread on #architecture on slack, which we would eventually record in the OEP PR.
• contacting me or Eric (the Arbiter of this OEP), with the intent of capturing a summary of the conversation on the PR.

Timeline

As specified in the PR, the target review end date is March 7th.  If needed, we will extend the deadline.

Thanks,

Nimisha (and Eric as "Arbiter")