I don’t want to high jack this feature request, but I would love to see the concept of an active target be rethought. There should only ever be THE development environment. Now that the publishing function has been added, the active target can be removed. Then server settings would also be modified for the better, so that all target settings can be managed without having to choose the active target. And lastly, Globals (db, s3, security, etc.) too could be managed in an easier way by setting all the targets from one panel.
In other words, instead of active target and then edit, you edit everything and in that edit panel all the targets have their unique parameters exposed and managed.
We will be introducing a whole new "Targets Manager", in the upcoming Wappler 7 betas as it is a major change.
This "Target Manager" will all target specific contains the settings, per target in a nice tree panel on the left side.
It will contains the settings from the project targets, server connect global options, and server connect globals indeed like database connections.
Having them all central in such panel, will give a nice overview of the options and remove the need to switch targets to only change target options.
This will remove the need of the active target switch, so it will be removed and the active target will be development only.
We are still rethinking the functionality of this "Targets Manager" so more ideas are welcome.
A very important question is:
Should we stick to the old settings files per target or make target files independent and only use environment variables to fill in the specific options.
The File Manager has its own target selection, we will just be adding all the targets there as well, so you can choose to which remote target you want to switch
Actually the way the current settings per target are working is quite confusing for many of the users, as you can see in many posts here. People don’t want to change targets and apply changes for each of them. People forget which target they are on and break stuff.
So these changes will improve the way you manage per target settings. They will be in a separate panel, similar to resource manager and you will just manage all settings in one place
I must be doing something wrong all these years then, The only time I ever switch to production is to confirm in the file manager that a file has been uploaded. And all my projects work just fine.
I am very concerned about backward compatibility with new features like this.
Easy, change target temporarily to development, make change, switch back to production.
I even explained that in a video only last week.
(Assuming you mean db manager)
I am referring to the database connection settings in Server Connect globals. To change the settings for the connection now you need to switch targets:
Same for a few more settings. Now imagine you have all the settings for every target in one panel, without the need to switch targets.
As I mentioned I use the same DB for both targets and have never had to set it up twice in different targets yet. I set it up once and it's done. Best thing is I never have to worry about a development database overwriting something in live production. I also never ever use the database manger other than to refresh schema if I added a new table.
The targets manager will be similar to the resources manager. One place where you have all settings for all targets at one place. No target switch required.
