Branches
EdgeDB’s branches make it easy to prototype app features that impact your database schema, even in cases where those features are never released. You can create a branch in your EdgeDB database that corresponds to a feature branch in your VCS. When you’re done, either merge that branch into your main branch or drop it leaving your original schema intact.
The procedure we will describe should be adaptable to any VCS offering branching and rebasing, but in order to make the examples concrete and easy-to-follow, we’ll be demonstrating how EdgeDB branches interact with Git branches. You may adapt these examples to your VCS of choice.
1. Create a new feature branch
Create a feature branch in your VCS and switch to it. Then, create and switch to a corresponding branch in EdgeDB using the CLI.
$
edgedb branch create featureCreating branch 'feature'... OK: CREATE BRANCH
$
edgedb branch switch featureSwitching from 'main' to 'feature'
You can alternatively create and switch in one shot using edgedb branch
switch -c feature.
3. Pull any changes on main
This step is optional. If you know your main code branch is current and
all migrations in that code branch have already been applied to your
main database branch, feel free to skip it.
We need to make sure that merging our feature branch onto main is a simple
fast-forward. The next two steps take care of that.
Switch back to your main code branch. Run git pull to pull down any new
changes. If any of these are schema changes, use edgedb branch switch main
to switch back to your main database branch and apply the new schema with
edgedb migrate.
Once this is done, you can switch back to your feature branches in your VCS and EdgeDB.
4. Rebase your feature branch on main
If you skipped the previous step, you can skip this one too. This is only
necessary if you had to pull down new changes on main.
For your code branch, first make sure you’re on feature and then run the
rebase:
$
git rebase mainNow, do the same for your database, also from feature:
$
edgedb branch rebase main5. Merge feature onto main
Switch back to both main branches and merge feature.
$
git switch main<changes> Switched to branch 'main'
$
git merge feature$
edgedb branch switch mainSwitching from 'feature' to 'main'
$
edgedb branch merge featureNow, your feature and its schema have been successfully merged! 🎉
Further reading
Further information can be found in the branches RFC, which describes the design of the migration system.