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Feature Gates

Overview

Feature gates are a set of key=value pairs that describe alpha or experimental features and can be turned on or off by specifying the key=value pair in the arguments list when launching the Service Catalog executable. A new feature gate should be created when introducing new features that may break existing functionality or introduce instability.

The following table is a summary of the feature gates that you can set on different versions of Service Catalog.

• The “Since” column specifies the Service Catalog release when a feature was introduced or its release stage was changed.
• The “Until” column, if not empty, specifies the last Service Catalog release in which you can still use a feature gate.

Feature	Default	Stage	Since	Until
AsyncBindingOperations	false	Alpha	v0.1.7
NamespacedServiceBroker	false	Alpha	v0.1.10	v0.1.28
NamespacedServiceBroker	true	Alpha	v0.1.29	v0.1.43
NamespacedServiceBroker	true	GA	v0.2.0
OriginatingIdentity	false	Alpha	v0.1.7	v0.1.29
OriginatingIdentity	true	GA	v0.1.30
OriginatingIdentityLocking	true	Alpha	v0.1.14
PodPreset	false	Alpha	v0.1.6
ServicePlanDefaults	false	Alpha	v0.1.32
UpdateDashboardURL	false	Alpha	v0.1.13
CascadingDeletion	false	Alpha	v0.3.0

Using a Feature

Feature Stages

A feature can be in Alpha, Beta or GA stage. An Alpha feature means:

• Disabled by default.
• Might be buggy. Enabling the feature may expose bugs.
• Support for feature may be dropped at any time without notice.
• The API may change in incompatible ways in a later software release without notice.
• Recommended for use only in short-lived testing clusters, due to increased risk of bugs and lack of long-term support.

A Beta feature means:

• Enabled by default.
• The feature is well tested. Enabling the feature is considered safe.
• Support for the overall feature will not be dropped, though details may change.
• The schema and/or semantics of objects may change in incompatible ways in a subsequent beta or stable release. When this happens, we will provide instructions for migrating to the next version. This may require deleting, editing, and re-creating API objects. The editing process may require some thought. This may require downtime for applications that rely on the feature.
• Recommended for only non-business-critical uses because of potential for incompatible changes in subsequent releases. If you have multiple clusters that can be upgraded independently, you may be able to relax this restriction.

Note: Please do try Beta features and give feedback on them! After they exit beta, it may not be practical for us to make more changes.

A GA feature is also referred to as a stable feature. It means:

• The corresponding feature gate is no longer needed.
• Stable versions of features will appear in released software for many subsequent versions.

Feature Gates

Each feature gate is designed for enabling/disabling a specific feature:

• AsyncBindingOperations: Controls whether the controller should attempt asynchronous binding operations

• NamespacedServiceBroker: Enables namespaced variants of ServiceBrokers, ServiceClasses, and ServicePlans.

• OriginatingIdentity: Controls whether the controller should include originating identity in the header of requests sent to brokers

• OriginatingIdentityLocking: Controls whether we lock OSB API resources for updating while we are still processing the current spec.

• PodPreset: Controls whether PodPreset resource is enabled or not in the API server.

• ServicePlanDefaults: Enables applying default values to service instances and bindings

• UpdateDashboardURL: Enables the update of DashboardURL in response to update service instance requests to brokers.

• CascadingDeletion: Enables deletion of the existing ServiceBindings when deleting a ServiceInstance.

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