VIP MU plugins branches and updates

The branch of VIP MU plugins that deploys to an environment—production branch or staging branch—can be configured in the Software Versions panel of the VIP Dashboard.

Production branch

VIP MU plugins is open sourced. Its development can be followed from the VIP MU plugins GitHub repository.

Staging branch

By default, VIP deploys the staging branch of VIP’s MU plugins to one non-production environment for all applications. This allows customers to test changes ahead of their release to production environments. This also provides time for the VIP Team to observe errors and test for bugs across a wider variety of applications.

Changes made and deployed to the VIP MU plugins Staging branch are labeled [Status] Deployed to staging and visible in this filtered VIP MU plugins pull request view. 

Release schedule

The release windows for VIP MU plugins (both production and staging branches) is currently Tuesdays between 08:00 and 22:00 UTC (09:00 and 23:00 UTC when Daylight Saving Time is in effect in North America).

Changelog

An entry is posted to the VIP Cloud Changelog for every release version of VIP MU plugins. The changelog posts can be filtered by release branch:

• Production branch changelog
• Staging branch changelog

Branches for local development

Local development environments must include a copy of VIP MU plugins. Without it, customizations, core behaviors, and functionality tested locally can often behave differently in a VIP Platform environment. The local copy of VIP MU plugins should be regularly kept up to date.

• A git clone of the vip-go-mu-plugins repository includes submodules. These must be initialized with git submodule update --init --recursive in order to work as expected.
• As an alternative to the vip-go-mu-plugins repository, the vip-go-mu-plugins-built repository can be used for local development. This is a “built” version of VIP MU plugins and requires no extra steps.
• The VIP Local Development Environment automatically loads and tracks the staging branch of VIP MU plugins when --mu-plugins=demo is selected in the environment creation process. No build steps are needed for this configuration.