Set up of locally stored repository in v2

[JanSvejda]

Hi, I am trying to configure a basic Flipt environment with local storage. Based on the documentation, I would expect the following to work:

storage:
  local:
    name: "local"
    backend:
      type: local
      path: "/data"
    branch: "main"
environments:
  default:
    name: "Default"
    storage: "local"
    default: true

However, the following error occurs:

{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"configuration source","path":"/config.yml"}
{"L":"INFO","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"flipt starting","version":"v2.0.1","commit":"82d2a817cbd55cc2c8af27987712e761115eb3ff","date":"2025-08-16T13:57:03Z","go_version":"go1.25.0"}
{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"checking for updates"}
{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"version info","current_version":"v2.0.1","latest_version":"1.59.3"}
{"L":"INFO","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"running latest version","version":"v2.0.1"}
{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"local state directory exists","path":"/home/flipt/.config/flipt"}
{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"secrets manager initialized and config processed"}
{"L":"DEBUG","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"creating license manager"}
{"L":"WARN","T":"2025-08-30T12:13:29Z","M":"no license key provided; additional features are disabled."}
Error: initializing environment store: environment "default": repository does not exist

I am building a container which includes feature flag files as initiating a fresh repo:

FROM docker-registry.services.sabio.de/job-images/java:21 as builder

COPY main/features /tmp/data
RUN cd /tmp/data && \
    git config --global init.defaultBranch main && \
    git init && \
    git config user.name "Flipt Container" && \
    git config user.email "flipt@container.local" && \
    git add . && \
    git commit -m "Initial commit with feature flags"

FROM docker.flipt.io/flipt/flipt:v2

COPY --from=builder --chown=flipt:flipt /tmp/data /data
COPY --chown=flipt:flipt main/config.yml /config.yml

USER flipt

EXPOSE 8080
EXPOSE 9000

CMD ["/flipt", "server", "--config", "/config.yml"]

so am confused why it's not working. I also checked the source code and couldn't find the issue. My guess is that this error occurs in the newRepository function. Any ideas?

[markphelps]

I think this may be a duplicate of #4589

Currently, the local storage backend does not play well with existing data, meaning data that you copy into the folder (/data) in your case in the container.

Flipt expects to be the owner of whats in that folder as it actually creates a local git repository there on the filesystem.

[JanSvejda]

Indeed a duplicate of that, thanks for linking to that. Closing this one then!

[markphelps]

@JanSvejda we just released v2.1.0 that should fix this, however there are a few steps that arent documented yet that you'll need to do to work with existing features.yaml files after upgrading

1. do a git init in your data/ folder to initialize a local .git repo
2. add and commit the files (`git add . && git commit -a -m "initial commit")
3. then run flipt server as you were doing

Now it should read the existing data and also write out any changes you make in the uI to your features.yaml file in the data folder

[JanSvejda]

@markphelps awesome, thank you for making this possible! I was now able to migrate from v1 to v2. Can confirm it works as described. I had to ensure only that each namespace is a folder and has its own features.yaml file.

[markphelps]

I had to ensure only that each namespace is a folder and has its own features.yaml file.

Thanks for confirming @JanSvejda I'll make sure to add ^ to the docs