dark launch

Definitions

1. A deployment technique where new code is released to production and executed in the background without exposing results to users. Dark launches allow teams to test performance, correctness, and scalability under real production load before enabling the feature for users. Facebook famously dark-launched features to hundreds of millions of users before anyone knew they existed.

   In plain English: Releasing new code to production secretly, running it in the background to test it under real conditions without any users seeing the results.

   Example: We dark-launched the new search engine in parallel with the old one for two weeks, comparing response times and result quality before the actual cutover.

Related Terms

• Feature Flag
• Blue-Green Deployment
• Canary Deployment
• blue-green deployment
• canary release
• bitmask
• A/B testing
• Smoke Test
• Process Manager
• Staging Environment
• Static Binary
• Test Spy