Multiple theme developers

Retired Boards Appdev Store Design

Topic summary

Multiple developers are collaborating on a Shopify Online Store 2.0 theme using Shopify CLI. GitHub integration is avoided due to build tools in the theme (custom build pipeline). To prevent overwriting store content, they’ve added config/settings_data.json to .shopifyignore, but this also prevents pulling store-specific content.

Key questions (unresolved):

  • How to pull content/settings from the dev store when settings_data.json is ignored? (settings_data.json holds theme settings and content presets per store.)
  • With a published theme and multiple developers pushing via “shopify theme push,” how to avoid overwriting each other’s changes? (Seeking safe collaboration/merge strategy without GitHub integration.)

Context/terms:

  • Shopify CLI: command-line tool for developing and deploying themes.
  • Online Store 2.0: newer theme architecture.
  • .shopifyignore: file specifying assets not to upload/download via CLI.
  • Published theme: live theme currently in use by the store.

Status: Request for workflow guidance; no answers or agreed solutions provided yet.

Summarized with AI on February 25. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello,

We are developing a Shopify theme for a client and there are multiple developers that are working on a theme. Theme is using Shopify 2.0 and we are using Shopify CLI. If we could use Github Integration for theme that would be great, but we cannot because a theme includes some build tools.

Currently settings_data.json file is in .shopifyignore to avoid overriding content on the dev store, but how can we then pull content from the dev store?

Another question is if we have published theme and all of us are working on it, how can we avoid overriding when we are doing shopify theme push?

Thanks.