Fork Isolation in Action

The forking tutorial showed the commands. This one shows what they mean: a live database app, copied in seconds, edited freely in the browser, while the original never notices.

Watch the tutorial

The setup

A real PostgreSQL with a pgAdmin interface, live on the server. A fork is an instant copy-on-write twin of all of it: same data at birth, completely separate lives after.

Step 1: The live app

rdc repo list --machine <machine-name>

Step 2: Fork it

rdc repo fork --parent demo-pgadmin --tag experiment --machine <machine-name> --up --detach

The video opens both pgAdmins in the browser. The original asks for a login, because production stays guarded. The fork opens straight into the workbench: forks are disposable sandboxes, so the gate steps aside (the repo decides this itself, based on whether it is a fork).

Step 3: Two worlds, one server

rdc repo list --machine <machine-name>

Edit, delete, break anything in the fork. The original keeps serving. Same tables at the moment of forking, independent ever after.

Step 4: Throw it away

rdc repo delete --name demo-pgadmin:experiment --machine <machine-name>

Seconds to create, seconds to discard. That is what makes “clone production, break nothing” a daily habit instead of a special event.

Next: Managing Secrets.