We're excited to announce our latest feature: Fast Fork. For users working with large environments, forking an environment can be a time-consuming process. Fast Fork offers a solution that can be up to 20 times faster than a regular fork. The only downside is that during the fork process, the source environment will be kept in read-only mode, which means that other users won't be able to make any changes to its content — this is similar to turning on Maintenance Mode.

Using Fast Fork on the DatoCMS interface is easy. Simply select the "Fast Fork" option when creating a fork. If a user is currently making changes to a record in the source environment, they will be warned and asked if they want to proceed anyway. This gives users the option to coordinate with other team members and avoid conflicts:

For users who prefer to use the CLI, the migrations:run and environments:fork commands support an additional flag for the fast fork option. However, unlike the interface, if a user is currently making changes to a record, the CLI will stop the operation. To proceed in any case, the user has to explicitely pass the --force option.

We hope that this new feature will help our users save time and increase efficiency when working with large environments. Check out our documentation page for all the details on Fast Fork and how to use it. Happy forking!