Versioning Figma Libraries

Its been like 3 years but I just found this topic. Did you ever find a solution? I’m struggling myself with figuring out how to deal with the library setup. We are building components from scratch, and have no existing established design system. I have a wip file for the library, and another one for handoff to dev. Designers need to consume from the wip library because we cant wait for something to be developed before using it. And we need to test these components through usage anyway. The thing is, what should happen when a component is ready for dev? Do I duplicate it over to the other file? Should people use that one? Do I have to replicate all my edits in both files every time? Should designers just not use the dev one? Man I’m so lost

Hi there,

Thank you for bringing up this topic.

One possible solution could be to separate files. Alternatively, you might want to consider using branching if you are on the Organization and Enterprise plans. Here are a couple of resources that might help:

Unfortunately, there’s no single “best” solution, but I hope you’ll find a method that works well for your organization. I also encourage other community members to share their tips!

Thanks,
Toku

Branching especially doesn’t help with mature design systems where style libraries that are tied to tokens (variables). The style libraries are instantly pushed out to everyone and would have to have extensive forsight into structure for modifications, such as themes built in and new themes have the version control.

Libraries need to have a version system in order to match how the codebase is published (for example, Vue or React components) so that designers can mock up relevant experiences for a specific version of a system. Right now the only solution would be to have many, many files, which puts a lot of pressure on design system teams (who are often small).