[WIP] Add an OEP defining the use of OpenFeature for feature toggles

[blarghmatey]

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[sarina]

Hi @blarghmatey, thank you for your submission!

I added a few style comments to the doc, hopefully they'll help fix the build. I only skimmed for style concerns in this pass.

Any thoughts as to who might make a good Arbiter for this OEP? They'll help drum up reviewers, post to the forums, etc as per OEP-1. Let me know how I can help!

[robrap]

Thanks. Some questions:

1. Is it expected that someone needs to read and become familiar with all of https://openfeature.dev/ as part of accepting this proposal, or is it possible to summarize what we are taking from the spec?
2. If the original OEP still stands, and this is just an extension of it, it still might make sense to add a note and link in the original toggle OEP.
3. OpenFeature has features like Hooks and Events. Are those compatible with chained providers? Would we need to explain in which ways these could and could not be used?
4. Does OpenFeature have details around how toggles should be annotated that would override any of the ADRs or How-Tos in edx-toggles? See https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/edx-toggles/en/latest/readme.html.

[kdmccormick]

Thanks for opening this @blarghmatey .

Separate but related: Feanil and I are currently trying to radically simplify our edx-platform settings. Any input or help you can provide there is appreciated.

[kdmccormick]

Agreed on the motivation. It is currently too hard to determine whether any given Open edX feature is enabled and how to toggle it on/off. The naming is inconsistent, there are many outdated toggles, and the interplay between Django settings and the various kinds of Waffle flags gets confusing. The edx-toggles abstraction layer was intended to smooth things out, but it seems to have only been partially rolled out, so I currently see it as only adding to the complexity.

Tutor has both made this better (by automating the toggling for most deployers) and worse (by adding another layer of abstraction for us to worry about).

[kdmccormick]

I'm seeking more detail on how we would use OpenFeature. The spec is quite involved and it'll take me some time to absorb their model of providers, values, and evaluation. Any code snippets of what you're thinking, even pseudo/informal code snippets, would be really helpful.

Does this replace or wrap Django settings? Same question site/org/course/experiment waffle flags. My understanding is that this would be a wrapper layer, but correct me if I'm wrong there. I am also presuming that this would replace edx-toggles so that we don't have two separate abstraction layers wrapping our toggles, but again, tell me if you're thinking otherwise.

Lastly, does this imply a separate microservice, or is it a library we install into edx-platform and/or the frontend apps?