This guide will show you how to configure Flipt to sync your data to a Git repository.

​
Prerequisites

  • Flipt v2
  • A GitHub Account and a repository to sync to

Flipt supports any Git provider including GitLab, Bitbucket, and is not limited to GitHub.

​
Using GitHub for Git Sync

This section will walk you through configuring Flipt to sync your flag state to a GitHub repository using a Personal Access Token (PAT) for authentication.

​
1. Create a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT)

  1. Go to GitHub Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens.
  2. Click “Generate new token”
  3. Give your token a name
  4. Select a resource owner (e.g. your organization)
  5. Select the repositories you want to give access to (or Select all)
  6. Set an expiration date
  7. Select the repository scopes you want to give access to:
    • repo read and write access (for private repositories)
    • contents read and write access
  8. Click “Generate token” and copy the token. You will not be able to see it again!

​
2. Configure Flipt Storage with GitHub Remote

Edit your Flipt configuration file to add a storage backend that syncs with your GitHub repository:

storage:
  github:
    remote: "https://github.com/<your-username>/<your-repo>.git"
    branch: "main"
    poll_interval: "30s"
    credentials: "github"
    backend:
      type: local
      path: "/path/to/local/clone"
  • Replace <your-username> and <your-repo> with your GitHub username and repository name.
  • Adjust path to where you want Flipt to store the local clone of your repo.

Setting the backend to local is optional as you can store the state in memory which is the default behavior.

​
3. Add GitHub Credentials

Add your GitHub PAT as a basic credential in the same configuration file:

credentials:
  github:
    type: basic
    basic:
      username: <your-github-username>
      password: <your-personal-access-token>
  • Replace <your-github-username> with your GitHub username.
  • Replace <your-personal-access-token> with the token you generated above.

Flipt can use environment substitution for credentials.

credentials:
  github:
    type: basic
    basic:
      username: ${GITHUB_USERNAME}
      password: ${GITHUB_TOKEN}

​
4. Configure Environments

If you want to use multiple environments (e.g., staging, production), reference your storage backend in the environments section and specify a directory for each environment:

environments:
  production:
    name: "Production"
    storage: "github"
    default: true
    directory: "production"
  staging:
    name: "Staging"
    storage: "github"
    directory: "staging"

This mapping between environments and storage backends means that multiple environments can share the same storage backend (e.g. a single GitHub repository).

Each environment that shares the same storage backend must have a unique directory to avoid conflicts.

​
5. Start Flipt

Start or restart your Flipt server with the updated configuration. Flipt will now:

  • Clone your GitHub repository to the specified local path
  • Periodically sync flag state to and from GitHub
  • Commit and push changes when you update flags via the Flipt API or UI

​
6. Troubleshooting

  • Ensure your PAT has the correct permissions.
  • Make sure the local path is writable by the Flipt process.
  • Check Flipt logs for any sync or authentication errors.

​
Conclusion

This guide showed how to configure Flipt to sync your flag state to a GitHub repository using a Personal Access Token (PAT) for authentication.

You can now use GitHub to sync your flag state to a GitHub repository and start using Flipt to manage your flags.

If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to the Flipt team on Discord or GitHub Discussions.

References: