Development Workflow Setup for EspoCRM – Best Practices?

[a.slyzhko]

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for advice on setting up a solid development workflow for EspoCRM in my company. Our setup is as follows:

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• EspoCRM Installation: Manual installation
• Started Customizing Since: EspoCRM 8.0.0
• Current Approach: Using the release codebase and making customizations in custom/Espo/Custom, client/custom, and install modules.

Challenges I'm Facing


After the release of EspoCRM 9.0.0, I noticed that the client/src folder is no longer included in the release package. This makes it difficult to inspect and modify frontend files in custom folder properly. Because of this, I’m now considering cloning the EspoCRM repository and staying on a stable branch while continuing custom development.

What I Need Help With

• Since the customization folders (custom/Espo/Custom, client/custom, and modules) are excluded by .gitignore, what’s the best way to manage version control for these while also keeping track of core updates?
• How do you structure your Git workflow for local development and deploying changes to production?

[yuri]

Hi,

We recommend to use the ext-template for development. The workflow is described in the repository README file. It's not supposed that development were carried out on the build.