ld-find-code-refs

Command line program for generating flag code references.

This repository provides solutions for configuring LaunchDarkly code references with various systems out-of-the-box, as well as the ability to automate code reference discovery on your own infrastructure using the provided command line interface.

Documentation quick links

• Feature guide
• Turn-key configuration options
• Execution via CLI
  • Prerequisites
  • Installing
    • MacOS
    • Linux
    • Windows
    • Docker
• Federal environments
• Configuration
  • Required arguments
  • All arguments
  • Using environment variables
  • Using a YAML file
  • Aliases
  • Delimiters
  • Ignoring files and directories
• Searching for unused flags
• Branch garbage collection

Turn-key Configuration options

We provide turnkey support for common trigger mechanisms and CI/CD providers. You can also invoke the ld-find-code-refs utility from the command line, which can be run in any custom workflow you define, such as from a bash script or a cron job.

System	Status
GitHub Actions	Supported
CircleCI Orbs	Supported
Bitbucket Pipes	Supported
GitLab CI	Supported
Manually via CLI	Supported

Execution via CLI

The command line program may be run manually, and executed in an environment of your choosing. The program requires your git repo to be cloned locally, and the currently checked out branch will be scanned for code references.

We recommend incorporating ld-find-code-refs into your CI/CD build process. ld-find-code-refs should run whenever a commit is pushed to your repository.

Prerequisites

If you are scanning a git repository, ld-find-code-refs requires git (tested with version 2.21.0) to be installed on the system path.

All turn-key configuration methods (docker images used by services like CircleCI or GitHub actions) come with git preinstalled.

Installing

macOS

brew tap launchdarkly/tap
brew install ld-find-code-refs

You can now run ld-find-code-refs.

Linux

We do not yet have repositories set up for our linux packages, but we do upload deb and rpm packages with our github releases.

Ubuntu

This shell script can be used to download and install ld-find-code-refs on Ubuntu.

wget -qO- https://api.github.com/repos/launchdarkly/ld-find-code-refs/releases/latest \
	| grep "browser_download_url" \
	| grep "amd64.deb" \
	| cut -d'"' -f4 \
	| wget -qi - -O ld-find-code-refs.amd64.deb

dpkg -i ld-find-code-refs.amd64.deb

Windows

A Windows executable of ld-find-code-refs is available on the releases page.

Docker

ld-find-code-refs is available as a docker image. The image provides an entrypoint for ld-find-code-refs, to which command line arguments may be passed. If using the entrypoint, your repository to be scanned should be mounted as a volume. Otherwise, you may override the entrypoint and access ld-find-code-refs directly from the shell.

docker pull launchdarkly/ld-find-code-refs
docker run \
  -v /path/to/your/repo:/repo \
  launchdarkly/ld-find-code-refs \
  --dir="/repo"

Manual

Precompiled binaries for the latest release can be found here. Be sure to install the required dependencies before running ld-find-code-refs.

Using code references in federal environments

If you are using the FedRAMP compliant LaunchDarkly federal instance, the ld-find-code-refs binary should be compiled with FIPS 140-2 support by using a tool like Go+BoringCrypto.

Configuration

ld-find-code-refs provides a number of configuration options to customize how code references are generated and surfaced in your LaunchDarkly dashboard.

• All configuration options are documented in CONFIGURATION.md
• Common configuration examples are documented in EXAMPLES.md
• Detailed information on configuring feature flag aliases is documented in ALIASES.md

Searching for unused flags (extinctions)

After scanning has completed, ld-find-code-refs will search the Git commit history for flags that have become extinct. A flag is considered extinct in a repository if there were code references for the flag at some point in time that were removed. This behavior can be configured to disable or control how many commits will be searched for extinct flags using the lookback argument. Extinct flags will be surfaced in the LaunchDarkly UI.

Branch garbage collection

After scanning has completed, ld-find-code-refs will search for and prune code reference data for stale branches. A branch is considered stale if it has references in LaunchDarkly, but no longer exists on the Git remote. As a consequence of this behavior, any code references on local branches or branches belonging only to a remote other than the default one will be removed the next time ld-find-code-refs is run on a different branch.

Stale branches may also be removed manually with the ld-find-code-refs prune subcommand.

This operation requires your environment to be authenticated for remote access to your repository. Branch cleanup is not currently supported when running ld-find-code-refs with Bitbucket pipelines.