Branching has been a part of Supabase for some time now, a way for you to experiment or build out new features without affecting your production environment. It requires you to connect your Supabase project to a GitHub repository which automates many parts of the workflow, but this also alienates those who prefer not to use Git. Today, we are announcing Branching 2.0 which removes the Git requirement and makes it super simple to spin up new branches.
A Supabase branch is essentially a copy of your Supabase project, minus the data. Rather than making risky changes to your production database, edge functions or configuration, you instead spin up a preview branch and make the changes there. This gives you a safe, isolated environment to work from. When you’re happy with your changes, you merge them back into production.
The current implementation of branching requires a connection to a GitHub repo. For every GitHub pull request created, a corresponding Supabase branch is also created and kept in sync. Database schema/migrations, functions and configuration all stored within your repo and synced up to Supabase when your commits are pushed. For those who want to work in a local and code first way, this is an ideal workflow, however, this is not suitable for those who prefer to work in a database first or no-code way, including AI Builders.
