New Dev Workflow - can't understand where the environments are

[Matteo]

Hi.
I had a previous conversation (@louiss - Questions about the new development workflow) about how the new dev workflow works. But now, I’m trying these new features and I can’t understand how to use them. So I decided to open this question, because this is a new separate issue.

forest-express-sequelize version 8.5.3

We switched to the new development workflow.

I did a forest init and it worked fine, as far as I can tell.

I also created a new branch.

And another developer forest init -ed too.

Question (1)

I did:

$ npx forest environments

ENVIRONMENTS
 ID        NAME                URL                         TYPE          
 4xxx6     prod-[undiscl]      https://prod-[undiscl].sa…  production    
 5xxx1     stg-[undiscl]       https://stg-[undiscl].sa…   remote        
 9xxx9     dev-[undiscl]       https://dev-[undiscl].sa…   remote        
 9xxx3     Development | baj…  http://localhost:3000       development   
 9xxx6     Development | mat…  http://localhost:3000       development

But in the Forest panel this is what I can see:

Which is the relationship between these two views?

What is supposed to be shown in the sections Environments and Development environments?
The Development environments look like there is an unexpected empty table… all squashed in a single horizontal line…

Question (2)
How can I create a new development environment to work on?

At the moment it looks like I have two development envoronment in the CLI, none in the project settings and I can’t switch (in the frontend) to any of the development environments:

What am I supposed to do?

In the docs here push - Developer guide it looks like I should be able to switch into my new development environment to make changes, but I can’t understand how!!

Thank you.

[Matteo]

Another detail: in Forest docs here environments:reset - Developer guide I can see this picture:

It looks like the development environment (localhost) should be shown in the environments switcher… isn’t it? I can’t compare exactely, because the docs still show the old frontend interface, and at the moment I can’t switch back, actually.

Thank you.

[Matteo]

Ok, maybe I understood something…

To see the dev env in the switcher I first also need to start the project locally.
And every environment is bound only to the developer that created the underlying branch…
No one else can see the env.
Is it?

BTW, it’s very difficult to make assumptions on what one should expect… Actually, it’s also very difficult to understand if we’re doing something wrong and we’re working on prod envs!!

So, as a suggestion, I think this is something that must be further explained in the docs.
Or am I missing something?

Thank you.

[Arnaud_Moncel]

Hi again @Matteo
All your question is related to the same issue.
I see you are not synchronize your development environment this mean when you created your environment with forest init you don’t start your development server with the new env variable.
Let me know

EDIT:
That’s right!

To see the dev env in the switcher I first also need to start the project locally.

That’s right too!

And every environment is bound only to the developer that created the underlying branch…
No one else can see the env.

[Matteo]

Thank you @Arnaud_Moncel
As a suggestion, I think you definitely should explain all of this in the docs.

Thank you!
Matteo

[Arnaud_Moncel]

I will share all your thread feedback to the team to improve the documentation about this.
Thank you again.

Can I close this thread or do you have more questions on it?

[Matteo]

Thank you @Arnaud_Moncel you’re very kind. No more questions at the moment.
We pushed hard today in order to dive into the new dev workflow and I hope now we understood everything.

In case, I’ll open another thread.
Thank you!