TEP0138 Per-feature Flags Improvement to Decouple API and Feature Versioning

[JeromeJu]

This issue tracks progress on per-feature flags improvements, documentation updates for API/feature versioning decoupling. This defines the work plan to guide the implementation process.

Context

[TEP-0138]: Decouple API and Feature Versioning proposes to solve the existing coupling of the group feature flag enable-api-fields by changing to use per-feature flags for new API-driven features in Tekton Pipeline. With the consensus made in WG, the implementation aims to achieve the following goals:

• Feature validations and implementation should be independent from any API version.
• Easy migration plan for setting feature flags to enable stable features only by default in the long term.
• Changes and updates made to the existing feature validations regarding decoupling API and feature versioning should keep as much backwards compatibility as possible.
• Cluster operators can enable or disable any new features of the intended stability level.

Design doc: TEP0138
Epic: #6966

Work Plan

1. Change existing validation to decouple feature and API versioning.

   • Decouple beta feature validation in v1beta1

2. Mend the gap between the validations of the stable features in v1 and v1beta1 by syncing up the validations in v1beta1.

   • Move Validation of Task and Pipeline to TaskSpec and PipelineSpec

3. Developer guide and API compatibility policies update; broadcasting in the community that we are shifting to per-feature flags:

   • Add feature graduation process
   • Refactor api-versioning.md Developer doc
   • Updates API-compatibility policies regarding new feature validations

4. Implementation of Per Feature Feature Flags #5632

   • Add Per-feature Flag Struct for New Features for API-driven features

5. After the release of the new Per-feature flag API compatibility policy and after new feature flags come in; once we have more new features using the new per-feature flag:

   • New features to conform to the Per-feature Flag Struct
     • New features to use Per-feature flag struct

6. Per feature flag test suite & CI setup:

   • Per-feature Flag Test Suite Implementation
   • Plumbing setup for additional CI tests
     • Add Prow setup for feature flag tests
     • Update e2e-test script for per-feature flag test

7. Tekton feature flags user-facing guide:

   • Add feature flags recording demo for developer guide
     • Tekton Per-feature Flag Demo Slides
     • Tekton Per-feature Flag Demo Recording

Cross-project Constraints

For followup on the security side, [Nov-18] I have communicated with @chuangw6 that we would not need to capture stability level in provenance for chains.

Future work

• Script to update the existing documentation for non-stable features.
• Quarterly alpha feature review to come up to review current features in alpha & beta to ensure per-feature flag usage.

[afrittoli]

@JeromeJu can we close this?

[JeromeJu]

@JeromeJu can we close this?

We would still need #7090 to close this one. Would be much appreciated if we could get it merged but this would not need to block the cutoff.

[JeromeJu]

Closing as #7090 is merged. Thanks again for the time and review on this!