In other words a way to branch to/from a Community file
Hi everyone,
I publish a design system (DS) to the Community and have frequent updates to fix issues and add/update components.
Community members duplicate this DS to their Organizational account to use in their own projects. They have reported to me that once they import the Figma file into their org and use it as a library they have no way of getting my latest updates easily and without breaking changes into their production design files that refer to the original “duplicated” file.
So it would be great if there was a way to publish “get latest” or “subscribe to changes” in a community file. (Instead of having to restart design file from scratch in the latest version of the Design System).
Librairies features are not an option as they are specific to an ORG and cannot be accessed through the community. And Swapping in this use case does not work well at all.
This would be great for everyone as it would allow Figma to always ship with latest official components from the big design systems from Apple, Google, Microsoft and any other design system available in the community.
(If it mean anything Sketch has had this feature for years now)
I’m not sure, If that reasonable to be a feature, Maybe as a toggle to let it update automatically or not
Because when you can edit the copied file and made changes into a component and then that components gets updated from the author, How should it react? replace it?
I know there are people who just use the files, but there are also people who edit them.
As a option to make that choice, I Vote this. but if it wants to happen to everyone then it’s a hard No for me.
This would function exactly like branches currently used by design teams in Figma:
Publisher owns the Main Branch.
When changes occur in the Main branch all branches are notified and can opt in to the changes they want. Or just not update at all.
So no unwanted changes would pollute either Main nor your own personalized branch.
It could even be optimized into a second feature where branches could be submitted to the Main branch to crowd source work (like you already do inside your Org).
Sketch goes a different route where you just “get the latest” file from Apple to start your file from which is essentially the same as getting a file from the Figma Community. This works for small short term projects but not so well for long term stuff.
+1. This would be exceedingly helpful for our public design system UI kit where we have a large community of third party users who make apps on our platform.
Now that Figma has announced their Marketplace for Community files it becomes even more relevant as it may be more profitable to Subscribe to an asset and it’s updates then it would to have multiple concurrent versions on the community.
Does anyone know of a good workaround for this in the meantime?
I utilized the Google Material Design Theme Builder Plugin when I started my design project in Figma. It created the base components and styles for me at that time. However, now I see that the Community’s M3 Material Design UI Kit has more components and styles added which I’m ready to start working with.
I have a single Figma file for my design system which I then used when building out the designs for all of my projects. I have no idea how best to approach this. Fortunately for my case, I haven’t really modified the generated components.
Any recommendations or links to relevant posts would be greatly appreciated!
There really isn’t a good workaround for this as far as I know.
When you need to update files with the latest components you have these options :
1. Use a shared library, but this only works when all users are in the same Figma Organization so you can’t do this with clients unless you start paying for them to be editors in your Org — obviously this does not scale.
2. You can copy and paste the components from the newer file into the active design file. This has 3 drawbacks: A) your newer components will be pasted in with the new colors and you will need to change them all manually to match the active design and B) It’s unrealistic for large design systems or for major chnages in the color systems (like the one Material just dropped for Surfaces and **C)**the pasted components will be forever linked back to the source file.
I published a free icon library on Figma Community and have pushed multiple updates to it (modifications, fixes, additions, etc.). The fact that anyone who uses the icon library is forced to reduplicate the project and swap out the libraries every time I publish an update instead of just updating their existing community file is kind of absurd.
I would like to be able to duplicate a community design file, publish it in my team and have it automatically update should the original author update the community file. Is there a script or a method that tracks of the version status of a community file and automatically replaces/updates the duplicated file in my team’s directory?
