I couldn't work out what this does. A library for mapping booleans to and from strings?
Hi - we're a feature flagging platform. You can put new features that you are working on behind boolean flags and then manage those features from our dashboard.
Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
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Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#12I couldn't work out what this does. A library for mapping booleans to and from strings?
Hi - we're a feature flagging platform. You can put new features that you are working on behind boolean flags and then manage those features from our dashboard.
Still unclear! "Feature" means a software feature? For example "I've implemented the feature of sorting customer records by date of birth"? I don't really understand why anyone would need a service to manage software features, so maybe feature means something else.
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi - we're a feature flagging platform. You can put new features that you are working on behind boolean flags and then manage those features from our dashboard.
Still unclear! "Feature" means a software feature? For example "I've implemented the feature of sorting customer records by date of birth" ? I don't really understand why anyone would need a service to manage software features, so maybe feature means something else.
We have an overview of why you might like to use a feature flagging platform here: https://docs.bullet-train.io/overview
Hopefully that helps!
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi - we're a feature flagging platform. You can put new features that you are working on behind boolean flags and then manage those features from our dashboard.
Still unclear! "Feature" means a software feature? For example "I've implemented the feature of sorting customer records by date of birth" ? I don't really understand why anyone would need a service to manage software features, so maybe feature means something else.
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Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#15Had to upvote, been using it for around 6 months, I couldn't imagine starting a project without it now.
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#16I couldn't work out what this does. A library for mapping booleans to and from strings?
Is a service for feature flags, where feature flags are a software pattern in a way. If you want to learn more about it, have a look into this: https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
In a nutshell, it allows developers to deploy new features but hide them based on a flag. Once it is ready to be released (example: product gave an ok, big announcement happened etc), then this feature just needs to be enabled through this flag. Now, this flag can be an environment variable, but for apps you will probably need a service, which the app always fetch the latest feature configs.
We use it here (although using Flaggio https://github.com/victorkt/flaggio) and it is super useful for continuous delivery. And you can as well control features based on groups (example: show just for beta users) or hide features if some bug was discovered.
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#17I wish there were more examples how to use feature flags. How would you test a feature flag e.g. Halloween discount. As this probably involves both front-end and back-end code. The only way I can think off how this can be tested is by making a special new user with this feature flag.
But do you now need to test all possible permutations of the flags combinations? If so, how to determine these permutations? Can imagine you test all possibilities every time??
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi - we're a feature flagging platform. You can put new features that you are working on behind boolean flags and then manage those features from our dashboard.
Still unclear! "Feature" means a software feature? For example "I've implemented the feature of sorting customer records by date of birth" ? I don't really understand why anyone would need a service to manage software features, so maybe feature means something else.
Feature flags are used for gradual rollout and testing of features. Including, but not limited by, A/B tests, region-locking features, rolling to features to internal users only and so on.
For example, you're developing a new version of the checkout page for your company from scratch (it can be a store selling physical goods, or a subscription service, or anything that requires payment). It means that for a while it will not have feature parity with your existing checkout page.
So first you implement feature parity with, say, German payment options (credit cards and Sofort). Then you set up a feature flag saying "for 5% of German customers display the new checkout", and monitor it. Then you bump it up to 10%, then to 50%.
Meanwhile you're working on accepting payments via Swish in the new checkout in Sweden. Once it's ready, you add a feature flag saying "for 5% Swedish customers display the new checkout" (and in parallel, you're probably already displaying the new checkout to 50% German customers).
And so on.
In their core feature flags are not really more than a glorified if statement, but:
- you want to view them, and handle them in a single place so that you can adjust the various parameters or quickly shut down a feature if it misbehaves
- this single place has to be scalable enough that it survives an influx of customers potentially triggering dozens of feature flags across your software
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#19Not to be confused with the Ruby on Rails SaaS template Bullet Train: https://bullettrain.co/
Thanks, I found this template yesterday and almost getting a wow because I see it on HN today.
Re: Bullet Train: Open-source feature flagging
#20Not to be confused with the Ruby on Rails SaaS template Bullet Train: https://bullettrain.co/
Yeah, I feel like the name doesn't really fit for feature flags as a service either.