diff --git a/src/content/daily-email/2023-04-17.md b/src/content/daily-email/2023-04-17.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..621ecd816 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/daily-email/2023-04-17.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +--- +title: > + Introducing feature flags to "build-configs" +pubDate: 2023-04-17 +permalink: > + archive/2023/04/17/introducing-feature-flags-to-build-configs +# tags: +# - a +--- + +Yesterday, I wanted to make a breaking change to my [build-configs project](https://www.oliverdavies.uk/archive/2023/03/04/why-i-built-a-tool-to-generate-configuration-files) - changing the default database credentials that are used by Docker Compose. + +As I have several projects based on generated files by the tool, changing the values could cause issues in those projects in the future and this is something that I wanted to avoid. + +## What did I do? + +To avoid this issue and needing to update all of my projects at once, I added a feature flag to the `build.yaml` file so I can opt-in to this feature on a per-project basis. + +If a project, like my [Drupal](https://github.com/opdavies/docker-example-drupal) and [LocalGov Drupal](https://github.com/opdavies/docker-example-drupal-localgov) Docker examples, are opted in, its files will get the new credentials. If not, it will continue to use the original ones. + +[In this commit](https://github.com/opdavies/docker-example-drupal/commit/3f496168d5c32f9706970519023b431ee02c4b19), you'll see where I enabled the feature flag and committed the resulting change. + +## What does this achieve? + +I can continue to work on existing projects without them breaking, and migrate projects one at a time by using the feature flag instead of needing to do them all once. + +Once all active projects have been migrated or completed, the feature flag can be removed and I can refactor and simplify the code - removing the feature flag and the legacy values.