Feature flags are a software development process that will help you turn a feature on or off without changing the source code. These are commonly called release toggles or feature flippers. Feature flags will allow new features to be deployed without being visible to users.
The reason behind developing feature flags is to create conditional feature branches into code to make logic available. But only to certain people at a time. A new code is executed when the flag is on, and if the flag is off, the code is skipped.
These flags occur within distributed version control systems, and they are the best practices in DevOps. Let us look at the benefits of incorporating it into your release process.
Feature flags will help development teams check new features in production while modifying the risk of poor release by providing a way to roll back the features if necessary and throw a kill switch easily. It will also help you validate the functionality of newly released features and lower the risk. This will also encourage trunk-based development that will help prevent merge conflicts from divergent code paths.
With the help of feature flags, developers can implement A/B testing and enable a feature for half of a segment of users. Then, turn off the part for the other half. Then, check the two performances against each other for a particular metric.
It will also help product managers to test various features within products in our systems. And no code deployment is required. Many large organizations like Google, Amazon, and Facebook use this A/B testing Before releasing it to their entire user base.
Additional Point Feature Flags
Another use for feature flags is agreeing a team to test a new thing on a subgroup of end users to check how it performs before releasing it to the entire audience. This Canary testing test will help lower the risk of launching a feature to a whole user base.
