Future upgrades when forking repo?

[njackson1582]

The AL-Go-PTE template is a great start for everything we want to do regarding DevOps, but there are some specific features we'd like to have in a standard PTE repo (code owners, object ranges, etc.). As GitHub doesn't allow for template variables (yet), I'm thinking something simple like a PowerShell script would be nice to have in each PTE that the developer can run which will programmatically make configurations to the repo as needed. However, to customize the template, I'd have to fork it.

If I fork the template to add my own PowerShell script, would I still be able to receive regular updates based upon the original AL-Go-PTE repository, ideally with the Update AL-Go System Files action? Or would I be stuck performing manual updates on each PTE repo?

[freddydk]

AL-Go was created with this scenario in mind as well.
It is kind of explained in this document: https://github.com/microsoft/AL-Go/blob/main/Scenarios/Contributing.md
You fork the AL-Go repo to your org - and then you run the Deploy action in your fork of the AL-Go repo.
Then you will have 3 repos:

• https://github.com/yourorg/AL-Go-PTE
• https://github.com/yourorg/AL-Go-Actions
• https://github.com/yourorg/AL-Go-AppSource

Remember to set PTE and AppSource app repos as templates.
Then you use your own PTE or AppSource app repo as template or you run Update AL-Go System files specifying your PTE or AppSource app as template repo.
Now your repo is using your PTE or AppSource app template.
If you make changes to "your three repos", you can run Collect in your fork of the AL-Go repo to collect the changes.
Now you can Fetch Upstream changes from microsoft/AL-Go to your fork and resolve conflicts if any.
And then re-run Deploy - potentially adding a new version number of incompatibilities might have been implemented (very rare)

So, you can kind of see the AL-Go repo as "the source" and the 3 repos as "the installation of AL-Go"

If your changes are good and useful for other partners - you can even submit them as contributions
Note that AL-Go forks and template repos must be public - I don't think the system supports private repos for this, but then again - your secrets are not in the AL-Go repos.

[njackson1582]

Perfect, this explains well the 3-repo model that I was a bit confused on. Thanks!