Deploys at Slack • Hacker News Board

Re: Deploys at Slack

#21

Post by draw_down » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #9

No mention of feature toggles what so ever. I guess that's why it took them a long time to fix the thing with the new WYSIWYG editor, where after 2 weeks or something, they offered a toggle for people to change back. Anyone knows their reasoning behind not employing feature toggles? I would feel very slowed down if I didn't have the guarantee and confidence I could quickly rollback in the event of errors.

Who said they don't use feature toggles? That is a separate concern from deployment. As far as I can tell you got mad about a feature in their UI and decided that implies something about their infrastructure with no actual evidence.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#22

Post by bsima » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

thinkingkong wrote: post #11

brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

I've built that tool 2-3 times now. The issue is really the deploy function and what controls it. It's always a one-off, or so tightly integrated into the hosting environment, that reaching in with a SaaS product is somewhat difficult. That being said, the new lowest-common-denominator standards like K8s make it way easier. If anyone is interested in using a tool just leave a comment and I'll reach out.

interested

Re: Deploys at Slack

#23

Post by 7ewis » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

This link has now been reposted 6 times in the past two weeks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22816645

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729766

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22801191

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784712

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22720028

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806810

Re: Deploys at Slack

#24

Post by deadbunny » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #5

How nice of them to volunteer 2% of their paid customer base as "canary" without them specifically opting in to it, or perhaps even being aware. Or perhaps they do it exclusively with the free service tier, which is much more understandable.

Anecdotally I usually see slack changes in my free tier channels a good week before paid tier ones so it wouldn't surprise me.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#25

Post by nuclearnice1 » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #5

How nice of them to volunteer 2% of their paid customer base as "canary" without them specifically opting in to it, or perhaps even being aware. Or perhaps they do it exclusively with the free service tier, which is much more understandable.

2% chance of being canary 20% chance it breaks Expected 15 minutes to roll back

Expect 3.6 seconds of outage per user outage per release.

It’s fine.

What I’d like you to get behind is disabling Windows Update. THAT thing is a menace.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#26

Post by darkwater » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

I wonder why they didn't evaluate at some point using an immutable infrastructure approach leveraging tools like Spinnaker to manage the deploy? They sure have the muscle and numbers to use it and even contribute to it actively, no? I mean, I know that deploying your software is usually something pretty tied to a specific engineering team but I really like the immutable approach and I was wondering why a company the size of Slack, born and grown in the "right" time, did not consider it.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#27

Post by mrdonbrown » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

brycethornton wrote: post #2

It's always nice to see how other teams do it. Nothing too groundbreaking here but that's a good thing. I did notice the screenshot of "Checkpoint", their deployment tracking UI. Are there solid open source or SaaS tools doing something similar? I've seen various companies build similar tools but most deployment processes are consistent enough to have a 3rd-party tool that was useful for most teams.

Sleuth is a SaaS deployment tracker that pulls deployments from source repositories, feature flags, and other sources, in addition to pushes via curl. You can see Sleuth used to, well, track Sleuth at https://app.sleuth.io/sleuth

[Disclaimer: am a Sleuth co-founder]

Re: Deploys at Slack

#28

Post by a13n » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

7ewis wrote: post #23

This link has now been reposted 6 times in the past two weeks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22816645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22801191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22720028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806810

So? Guidelines don't explicitly say this behavior is unallowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sometimes posts that deserve to be on the front page don't make it. Seems fine to repost periodically as long as you aren't spamming many times per day.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#29

Post by paxys » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

7ewis wrote: post #23

This link has now been reposted 6 times in the past two weeks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22816645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22801191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22720028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806810

And yet it has only reached the front page once. Every article you see on top has been posted multiple times in order to get there. That is how online voting/aggregation systems work.

Re: Deploys at Slack

#30

Post by rattray » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

7ewis wrote: post #23

This link has now been reposted 6 times in the past two weeks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22816645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22801191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22720028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22806810

None of them garnered any traction/comments, in case others were looking for that.