159 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
159 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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comments: false
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type: index, dev
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stage: Data Stores
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group: Tenant Scale
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info: "See the Technical Writers assigned to Development Guidelines: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/ux/technical-writing/#assignments-to-development-guidelines"
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description: "Development Guidelines: learn about organization when developing GitLab."
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---
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# Organization
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The [Organization initiative](../../user/organization/index.md) focuses on reaching feature parity between
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SaaS and self-managed installations.
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## Consolidate groups and projects
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- [Architecture blueprint](../../architecture/blueprints/consolidating_groups_and_projects/index.md)
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One facet of the Organization initiative is to consolidate groups and projects,
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addressing the feature disparity between them. Some features, such as epics, are
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only available at the group level. Some features, such as issues, are only available
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at the project level. Other features, such as milestones, are available to both groups
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and projects.
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We receive many requests to add features either to the group or project level.
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Moving features around to different levels is problematic on multiple levels:
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- It requires engineering time to move the features.
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- It requires UX overhead to maintain mental models of feature availability.
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- It creates redundant code.
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When features are copied from one level (project, group, or instance) to another,
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the copies often have small, nuanced differences between them. These nuances cause
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extra engineering time when fixes are needed, because the fix must be copied to
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several locations. These nuances also create different user experiences when the
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feature is used in different places.
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A solution for this problem is to consolidate groups and projects into a single
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entity, `namespace`. The work on this solution is split into several phases and
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is tracked in [epic 6473](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6473).
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### Phase 1
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- [Phase 1 epic](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6697).
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- **Goals**:
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1. Ensure every project receives a corresponding record in the `namespaces`
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table with `type='Project'`.
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1. For user namespaces, the type changes from `NULL` to `User`.
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We should make sure that projects, and the project namespace, are equivalent:
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- **Create project:** use Rails callbacks to ensure a new project namespace is
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created for each project. Project namespace records should contain `created_at` and
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`updated_at` attributes equal to the project's `created_at`/`updated_at` attributes.
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- **Update project:** use the `after_save` callback in Rails to ensure some
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attributes are kept in sync between project and project namespaces.
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Read [`project#after_save`](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/blob/6d26634e864d7b748dda0e283eb2477362263bc3/app/models/project.rb#L101-L101)
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for more information.
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- **Delete project:** use FKs cascade delete or Rails callbacks to ensure when a `Project`
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or its `ProjectNamespace` is removed, its corresponding `ProjectNamespace` or `Project`
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is also removed.
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- **Transfer project to a different group:** make sure that when a project is transferred,
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its corresponding project namespace is transferred to the same group.
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- **Transfer group:** make sure when transferring a group that all of its sub-projects,
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either direct or through descendant groups, have their corresponding project
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namespaces transferred correctly as well.
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- **Export or import project**
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- **Export project** continues to export only the project, and not its project namespace,
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in this phase. The project namespace does not contain any specific information
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to export at this point. Eventually we want the project namespace to be exported as well.
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- **Import project** creates a new project, so the project namespace is created through
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Rails `after_save` callback on the project model.
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- **Export or import group:** when importing or exporting a `Group`, projects are not
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included in the operation. If that feature is changed to include `Project` when its group is
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imported or exported, the logic must include their corresponding project namespaces
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in the import or export.
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After ensuring these points, run a database migration to create a `ProjectNamespace`
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record for every `Project`. Project namespace records created during the migration
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should have `created_at` and `updated_at` attributes set to the migration runtime.
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The project namespaces' `created_at` and `updated_at` attributes would not match
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their corresponding project's `created_at` and `updated_at` attributes. We want
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the different dates to help audit any of the created project namespaces, in case we need it.
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After this work completes, we must migrate data as described in
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[Backfill `ProjectNamespace` for every Project](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/337100).
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### Phase 2
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- [Phase 2 epic](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6768).
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- **Goal**: Link `ProjectNamespace` to other entities on the database level.
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In this phase:
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- Communicate the changes company-wide at the engineering level. We want to make
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engineers aware of the upcoming changes, even though teams are not expected to
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collaborate actively until phase 3.
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- Raise awareness to avoid regressions, and conflicting or duplicate work that
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can be dealt with before phase 3.
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### Phase 3
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- [Phase 3 epic](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6585).
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- **Goal**: Achieve feature parity between the namespace types.
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Problems to solve as part of this phase:
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- Routes handling through `ProjectNamespace` rather than `Project`.
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- Memberships handling.
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- Policies handling.
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- Import and export.
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- Other interactions between project namespace and project models.
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Phase 3 is when the active migration of features from `Project` to `ProjectNamespace`,
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or directly to `Namespace`, happens.
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### How to plan features that interact with Group and ProjectNamespace
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As of now, every Project in the system has a record in the `namespaces` table. This makes it possible to
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use common interface to create features that are shared between Groups and Projects. Shared behavior can be added using
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a concerns mechanism. Because the `Namespace` model is responsible for `UserNamespace` methods as well, it is discouraged
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to use the `Namespace` model for shared behavior for Projects and Groups.
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#### Resource-based features
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To migrate resource-based features, existing functionality will need to be supported. This can be achieved in two Phases.
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**Phase 1 - Setup**
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- Link into the namespaces table
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- Add a column to the table
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- For example, in issues a `project id` points to the projects table. We need to establish a link to the `namespaces` table.
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- Modify code so that any new record already has the correct data in it
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- Backfill
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**Phase 2 - Prerequisite work**
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- Investigate the permission model as well as any performance concerns related to that.
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- Permissions need to be checked and kept in place.
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- Investigate what other models need to support namespaces for functionality dependent on features you migrate in Phase 1.
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- Adjust CRUD services and APIs (REST and GraphQL) to point to the new column you added in Phase 1.
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- Consider performance when fetching resources.
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Introducing new functionality is very much dependent on every single team and feature.
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#### Settings-related features
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Right now, cascading settings are available for `NamespaceSettings`. By creating `ProjectNamespace`,
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we can use this framework to make sure that some settings are applicable on the project level as well.
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When working on settings, we need to make sure that:
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- They are not used in `join` queries or modify those queries.
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- Updating settings is taken into consideration.
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- If we want to move from project to project namespace, we follow a similar database process to the one described in [Phase 1](#phase-1).
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## Related topics
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- [Consolidating groups and projects](../../architecture/blueprints/consolidating_groups_and_projects/index.md)
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architecture documentation
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- [Organization user documentation](../../user/organization/index.md)
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