I’ve built a pretty complex Bubble app and it relies heavily on a plugin with custom Elements and Actions - over 20 of them - to deal with Bubble’s limitations - basically using Bubble like a Low Code platform rather than No Code. I’ve developed and tested with the Test version of my plugin so I can bugfix in realtime, but recently have finally pushed the site live.
I want to continue to retain the development advantages of using a Test plugin version for my Test site as I develop new features, but I want the Live site to use a formally published version of the plugin which won’t continuously be changing. Is there an easy way to achieve that?
I am now quite concerned that I’ll have to install the Published plugin alongside my Test version and then swap every single Element and Action across from one to the other, which is going to be very time consuming and likely error prone. Surely there’s a better way?
My understanding is that a testing plugin is installed on its own in the app.
The same plugin installed normally (not in test mode) will be a different plugin from the test one.
So hypothetically you could keep both, but Bubble says clearly that any testing plugin will have a bad impact on a live app.
You can see warnings in the console:
Using plugins in testing mode can considerably slow down your application as they are not cached. You should only use a test app to test plugins.
and in the plugin editor:
Test app (it should not be on a dedicated cluster nor used in production)
Thanks, yes I’ve certainly seen the warnings.
Irrespective of the performance penalty they talk about, I think my point is that I want to develop against the Test plugins, as they often need a lot of iterations to get right, but release with a stable fixed version of same that won’t be disrupted as soon as I change the test version. Having to convert every plugin Element and Action to its equivalent with exactly the same name is immensely painful… even if they just indicated which version was which it would help!
What I’m doing is obviously not the standard way Bubble is meant to work, but IMHO it turns it from a toy into a pretty powerful platform.
If you want to know for sure you can test this setup with a second app and a new plugin with just a sample element. Publish the app and see what happens
Well I am already trying it in my real app, the published version of the app uses the test plugin still which dynamically picks up updates I only want in my test environment, and swapping to a separate published version works but is immensely painful - hence why I was asking if there was a better way 
I’m going to assume there isn’t, but if anyone at Bubble is listening, some tiny tweaks here reduce the pain and if you put in proper support for this you could extend the use cases for Bubble a lot
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