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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Small and medium business | Business Central, N... / Recommended approach f...
Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
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Recommended approach for development

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Posted on by SamGupta 15

Hi Team,

We wanted to know what you all recommend when it comes to the right approach for development. We have a prod env and a sandbox env. We have a large team and they all plan to develop. Our assumption would be that we are better off developing and testing on our local systems first before we migrate to the sandbox. Or can we simply point VSCode to Sandbox, build and test inside VS Code in a GitHub branch and promote the package when we feel confident with the codebase? What would you recommend so that we are not stepping on each other's toes and not breaking the sandbox every min? If these standards are documented anywhere, we will appreciate the links.

  • Suggested answer
    Bilal Haider Profile Picture
    Bilal Haider 248 on at
    RE: Recommended approach for development

    Sandbox environment has nothing to do with git as far as you are not using strict DevOps.

    When you push an app to the sandbox no matter your code is committed or not, or even if git/source code is used at all, it will be published and change the sandbox and functionality for which the app is developed.

    For this scenario yes, you can have your own local sandbox on machine. for that docker containers are mostly used. You can create new sandbox and then remove it after use and then create a new one. Business central has docker images available for all versions. But note again that you should have developer license.

  • SamGupta Profile Picture
    SamGupta 15 on at
    RE: Recommended approach for development

    Hi Bilal,

    Thanks for this insight. This is extremely helpful!

    We are going to be reviewing all the links you provided, and yes I am very familiar with Git. I am trying to connect the dots for the dev env needs for BC.

    I think I am clear on the workflow for the code with local repository and remote and developing and merging etc. But my confusion is that in other programming languages, you would need a local environment that would host the locally developed code to test and debug.

    So are you saying that if I run and debug the local repository, the VS code would launch a completely separate instance from Sandbox, without impacting the Sandbox env, where I can test my changes before committing? Obviously, once we promote everything and merge the local branch with the main, it's going to be part of the continuous build to build the env. Not sure if you can follow my confusion.

  • Suggested answer
    Bilal Haider Profile Picture
    Bilal Haider 248 on at
    RE: Recommended approach for development

    Hi,

    If its AL development and working in team then you should surely go with git either with platform github or azure devops repos.

    Development on your local systems and then merging at end will be tedious job. Moreover may be functionality on which one is working is required by other continuously and updated code needed to be shared regularly.

    Standards for working with git are same as for any other programming language. For git code written in any language is text.

    Sample AL project on github is github.com/.../AL

    If you want to learn in detail then this is complete learning path along with DevOps docs.microsoft.com/.../

    Or you can follow these short courses:

    docs.microsoft.com/.../

    docs.microsoft.com/.../

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