Create idea of read-only databasetc-geo-read-only-idea

In GitLab EE, a GitLab instance can be read-only (e.g. when it's a Geo
secondary node). But in GitLab CE it also might be useful to have the
"read-only" idea around. So port it back to GitLab CE.

Also having the principle of read-only in GitLab CE would hopefully
lead to less errors introduced, doing write operations when there
aren't allowed for read-only calls.

Closes gitlab-org/gitlab-ce#37534.

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/development/verifying_database_capabilities.md b/doc/development/verifying_database_capabilities.md
index cc6d62957e3..ffdeff47d4a 100644
--- a/doc/development/verifying_database_capabilities.md
+++ b/doc/development/verifying_database_capabilities.md
@@ -24,3 +24,15 @@ else
   run_query
 end
 ```
+
+# Read-only database
+
+The database can be used in read-only mode. In this case we have to
+make sure all GET requests don't attempt any write operations to the
+database. If one of those requests wants to write to the database, it needs
+to be wrapped in a `Gitlab::Database.read_only?` or `Gitlab::Database.read_write?`
+guard, to make sure it doesn't for read-only databases.
+
+We have a Rails Middleware that filters any potentially writing
+operations (the CUD operations of CRUD) and prevent the user from trying
+to update the database and getting a 500 error (see `Gitlab::Middleware::ReadOnly`).