Hey Figma team, like a lot of design teams, we often add features over time.
Sometimes, the feature adds are so large or disruptive to the current design that we need to overhaul it (and sometimes the project structure).
Starting a new file is disruptive because we have a fair number of people who have relationships with the old file. Without a redirect function, getting all the stakeholders to find and start using the new file is an epic poem of a task.
We want to minimize disruption to other stakeholders who may still need the older designs until the new one is agreed on and ready. The logical thing to do is work in a branch, right?
The problem with this is that right now, branch merges require a complete review of conflicts - and this is a problem, because:
- I don’t want to review and merge conflicts one by one. I just want to completely overwrite main with my branch. Making me do this is the most unnecessary form of “are you sure” and takes forever.
- The merge tool has a stroke and basically goes into a coma if there are too many changes, regardless of how complex main is. Merging is scary and doesn’t always seem to work right.
Hey Figma folks, it would be awesome if we could bypass the merge tool and just directly overwrite main with the branch with no diff-ing. Don’t make our local machines chug out the overwrite.
You could put five safety confirm dialogs, an American Gladiators-style obstacle course, and a wizard who demands we answer three riddles in the confirmation flow to protect from accidental overwrites, and it would STILL be smoother than what we have now, which is not being able to use branching for big edits.
Pleeeeeeeeeease? :D