Comparison
Deployment gatevsFeature flag
Deployment gate
the pipeline stops and waits for a human to press a button, or for a metric to stay inside a threshold for ten minutes.
A condition that must be satisfied before a pipeline proceeds — a human approval, a test result, an automated check on live signals. Automated gates are the useful kind, since they encode a specific belief about what makes a release safe. Manual gates mostly measure how quickly someone reads Slack, and they degrade into rubber stamps precisely when they are needed most.
Full entry →Feature flag
you ship the code turned off, switch it on for yourself, then for one percent, then for everyone.
A runtime switch controlling whether a code path is active. It separates release from deploy, enables gradual rollout, and gives you an instant off switch that does not require a deploy. Flags are debt: every one is a branch to test and understand, so each needs an owner and a removal date.
Full entry →