Retool will deprecate the use of YAML for protected apps, queries, and resources in Source Control. Support will be removed in self-hosted Retool 3.196 and later.

Self-hosted organizations still using YAML serialization of these elements in Source Control must migrate to Toolscript prior to upgrading.

Organizations with self-hosted deployments must manually deploy latest changes when upgrading to self-hosted Retool 3.52 or later to ensure that recent updates to Source Control are applied.

You can now enable collaborators on Source Control branches. Source Control branches are private by default and only allow changes by the owner. On collaborative branches, multiple users can commit changes and submit pull requests to protected elements.

At a high level, migrating to Source Control entails the following:

• One-time set up: Source Control can be set up on any of the instances you are hosting. Once you’ve set it up once, you can share the same configuration/secrets across all your instances.
• One default branch, one repo: Instead of having multiple branches (development, staging, and production), Retool recommends one main branch. All your instances configured with Source Control can be pointing at that branch. Instead of merging from branch to branch to manage and promote changes, Releases can be used to manage what end users see, and how applications get updated.
• Granular control at the app level: There is no longer a need to use VERSION_CONTROL_LOCKED=true to disable editing on an instance. Instead you can lock down and sync specific apps under Source Control, leverage releases, and/or use permissions to manage who (or if anyone) can edit and create apps in a particular instance.

Depending on whether you’ve already set up Source Control or not, follow the respective guide below.

From Git Syncing to Source Control​

1. Upgrade to version v2.69.17 or higher.
2. While internal or external users should not be affected, all builders should be alerted and requested to not make any changes during this migration.
3. Set up Source Control on an instance, following our Source Control documentation. If you have multiple instances, this is typically your development instance.
4. On all instances, disable Git Syncing.
   1. Set DISABLE_GIT_SYNCING=true, and VERSION_CONTROL_LOCKED=false
   2. Remove the Git Syncing configuration repository URL and branch name in Advanced Settings:

5. For multiple-instance setups:

   1. In all previously read-only instances, copy over Source Control related ENV vars from the instance that’s already configured to use Source Control: GITHUB_APP_ID, GITHUB_APP_INSTALLATION_ID, GITHUB_APP_PRIVATE_KEY
   2. Configure Source Control on other instances. If you are using a Git Flow style of development with multiple branches, you now have the option to move to a single branch flow and use Release Management to gate what end-users see. Retool strongly recommends using one branch, typically called main.

6. After a few minutes, across all instances, apps that are protected will now be marked as such and edits will not be able to be made directly to those apps. Releases will continue to pin any apps. If there are apps you do not want to appear in any particular instance anymore, you can manually delete them.

7. You can now archive the git repository associated with Git Syncing.