Should we consider a v4 flag in the cli configuration?

[plamber]

Hi @pnp/cli-for-microsoft-365-maintainers,
we have some enhancements that are going to break the current capabilities of the CLI.

See #2292, #2298, #2024, #2251, #2309

Instead of introducing more "exception flags" as suggested in #2298 let us introduce one feature flag that we could call "previewFeatures": true

We can then use this flag and manipulate the behavior in our current codebase without affecting the v3 version. Once we are ready for v4 we have less work to do to prepare for the new release.

Let me know what you think about this. I am sure this requires more discussion.

br,
Patrick

[waldekmastykarz]

I see a couple of issues with using one catch-all previewFeatures flag.

1. It's not self-explanatory what you're enabling. You will need to check the docs to see what you're turning on
2. As we introduce more changes, we could be breaking you without your explicit opt-in. Yes, you enabled preview features, but you wouldn't know that something has changed between one version or another until you run CLI and it breaks on you. And then you need to figure out why, which could increase the number of bug reports that we'd get
3. It's an all-or-nothing approach. You can't opt-in for a single preview feature. You either enable them all or none. If there is just one feature you'd like to use but you'd want to keep the existing functionality as-is so that you don't need to update all scripts, that wouldn't be an option.

Instead, I'd propose we use a separate flag for each feature. When doing a major release, we can decide if we want to keep the feature flag with reversed default value or remove it altogether.