In my last post about Feature Toggles I mentioned that, for my simple scenario, I chose FeatureSwitcher amongst the plethora of packages (254 packages for the feature toggle search, never went beyond page 1).
A Feature Toggle is just a way to enable of disable certain software features based on several criteria (configuration flag, time, user, some complex context,…).
The problem feature toggles try to solve is: how does one release code that is not totally finished without any apparent impact on users. Let’s say your team is working on two features simultaneously, one large and one small, and we want to get the small one “out of the door” (that is, deployed to production) as soon as possible while disallowing users to operate the large, unfinished one.
Sometimes (more often than not, fortunately enough), things work as they should and one feels the warmth that things done the right way bring.
I have spent a week heavy on the refactoring side. It’s been a while since I spent so much time on a “virgin” codebase, growing it test first. And I want to share with you, guys and girls, a piece of refactoring that ended up being pretty cool.