Feature Overview (Goal Summary)

Hosted Control Planes and HyperShift provide consumers with a different architectural path to OpenShift that aligns best with their multi-cluster deployment needs. However, today’s API surface area in HCP remains “like a box of chocolates you never know what you're gonna get”~ Forrest Gump. Sometimes gated best-effort via the `hcp` cli (which is suboptimal).

The goal of this feature is to build a standard for communicating features that are GA/Preview. This would allow us:

• To experiment while setting the right expectations. 
• Prompt what we deem tested/stable. 
• Simplify our test matrix and smoothes the documentation process.

This can be done following the guidelines in the FeatureGate FAQ. For example, by introducing a structured system of feature gates in our hosted control plane API, such that features are categorized into 'n-by-default', 'accessible-by-default', 'inaccessible-by-default or TechPreviewNoUpgrade', and 'Tech Preview', we would be ensuring clarity, compliance, and a smooth development and user experience.

Requirements (Acceptance Criteria)

• Feature Categorization: Ability to categorize API features according to OpenShift's guidelines (e.g., DevPreview/TechPreview/GA).
• Backward Compatibility: Ensures backward compatibility.
• Upgrade Path: Clear upgrade paths for 'accessible-by-default' features
• Documentation:  documentation for each category of feature gates.

 Additional resources

There are other teams (e.g., the assisted installer) teams following a structured pattern for gating features:

• https://github.com/openshift/assisted-service/tree/master/internal/featuresupport 
• swagger.yaml - openshift/assisted-service · GitHub