Merge two anvil applciations in one

davide.lissoni · May 17, 2024, 9:44am

I’m trying to merge two anivl applications in one. I’m looking the faster and simpler method to do that, trying to avoid copy-paste of design and code activities.
Is it possible to import/ upload a form from an application to another?

duncan_richards12 · May 17, 2024, 9:46am

If you download both apps with git, every form/module/server module is available as files/folders that can be copied and pasted much more easily.

davide.lissoni · May 17, 2024, 10:04am

Thank you Duncan, I thought about thatsolution , but if I connect the apps with a repo inside my git I am going to lose all my past history? And if in future I want to downgrade my anvil plan how can i move back by using the anvil default repo?
Thank you

duncan_richards12 · May 17, 2024, 10:22am

I don’t know about the downgrading part, but it does seem you can merge 2 git repos.

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/msrose/2feacb303035d11d2d05

combining-git-repositories.md

# Combining two git repositories

**Use case**: You have repository A with remote location rA, and repository B (which may or may not have remote location rB). You want to do one of two things:

- preserve all commits of both repositories, but replace everything from A with the contents of B, and use rA as your remote location
- actually combine the two repositories, as if they are two branches that you want to merge, using rA as the remote location

**NB**: Check out `git subtree`/`git submodule` and [this Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1425892/how-do-you-merge-two-git-repositories) before going through the steps below. This gist is just a record of how I solved this problem on my own one day. 

Before starting, make sure your local and remote repositories are up-to-date with all changes you need. The following steps use the general idea of changing the remote origin and renaming the local master branch of one of the repos in order to combine the two master branches.

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Zaro · May 17, 2024, 10:27am

If you clone the app with git on your local machine, all of the git history will be retained. The origin is stored on Anvil’s servers. You can push any subsequent commits that you make on your local machine to the origin and they will appear in the Anvil editor.

If at some point you want to go back to a previous version of your app, you can reset a branch to a specific commit either from the Anvil editor or your terminal.

stefano.menci · May 17, 2024, 12:46pm

Clone the two app repositories to your PC (that’s git, nothing to do with GitHub), copy the forms and server modules from one app to the other, commit and push.

Now the second app has one commit that adds all those files. You will obviously need to fix the code so the new forms are correctly used.

Another strategy that could apply in some cases, would be to setup the forms of one app as usable as custom components, add the app as dependency to the second app, then use those forms as components. This requires more work, but allows to merge the forms of the app with custom components with as many apps as you like.

divyeshlakhotia · May 18, 2024, 5:34am

If you want to go for a simple way (without using any git branches), why not add the second app as a dependency to the first one? You can access all the methods of that dependency from your main app and also open forms on it.