kubecon25/content/day3/02_open-feature.md
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Type-safe feature flagging in openfeature: Lessons learned from using feature flags at google 2
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{{% button href="https://youtu.be/mewXGSwDCE4" style="warning" icon="video" %}}Watch talk on YouTube{{% /button %}} {{% button href="https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/kccnceu2025/f6/Type-safe%20Feature%20Flagging%20in%20OpenFeature.pdf" style="tip" icon="person-chalkboard" %}}Slides{{% /button %}}

Featureflags?

  • Idea: Change the behaviour of an application without rebuilding it
  • Goal: Control rollout, reduce risk, experiment (a/b)
  • At google: A huge number of feature flags (150k+) but that's because people forget to turn them off

Where does the flag come from

  • Lifecycle of a flag: Create, Manage, Deprecate, Delete -> But will it be created frist in code or in the service
  • Classic implementation: Just a if/else that uses a function to get the flag
  • Problem: What if the flag names missmatch between the code and flag ser -> Muliple sources of truth
  • Solution: Require use of auto-generated flag bindings (codegen from the management system) to mitigate typos, etc.

OpenFeature

  • Goal: Vendor agnostic, standardized, open source
  • Basic setup: Register provider (once per app), create a client, use client to get flags
  • CLI: Integrate into management system, keep a local manifest of all flags and generate code (generates the client)
  • Now: Just call the client's method instead of hard-coding feature flag names