how to make several versions of selfhosted appwrite

for eg i am launching a social media app with appwrite as a backend now my first release doesnt contain the chat functionality but i will introduce this functionality in the near future for this i ll have to make changes on my appwrite backend which will already be in production and in daily use for users. how am i suppose to branch out another instance of appwrite wherein i do all the changes and test those changes and when everything looks merge those changes with the production instance

Why you need several versions?

Or you meant several instances?

i mean when on git hub you have a dev branch which is an exact copy of the master branch but only the master branch is in production so you are abel to test and make changes in your dev branches

Got you

So, a fast way around it is to just duplicate the server (in Digital ocean or similar) and change the env domain name.
Then you can point a different domain name to that instance.

Is this make sense?

but then the frontend changes will be done in accordance to this duplicated appwrite instance and when the deployment will happen all these changes will have to be changed again in accordance with the main production appwrite instance

also will this duplicated appwrite instance have all the databases collections etc init

this sound too "hacky" to me

Mmm, Yes
For that you'll can

• Extract your MariaDB to an external server. then let all instance connect to the same DB
• Use two projects - and, yes, you will have some duplications.

can i merge two projects??

Nope..

You could have multiple projects in Appwrite

Of course

Use two projects - and, yes, you will have some duplications

I try to keep a base of my Appwrite project in an appwrite.json, so deploying a new copy is easy

Just an $ appwrite deploy collection, $ appwrite deploy function, etc

but then at the time of deployment i ll have to face downtime as i ll have to make those same changes onto the main project

I don't think it would - as far a functions go, I know when you do a new deployment, the old one stays active until the new one is ready to take over. And collections deployments don't take long

ok

will have to see this .

thankyou

can i fork the appwrite github repo and use it for my production while i can branch it and use its branch for my new features dev etc